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It takes some time for the festivities on Endor and in the wider galaxy to fizzle down, and even longer still for anything to even slightly settle long enough for both of them to rest. There’s always some new problem arising, some new political drama or skirmish with remnants who don’t take the Emperor’s death well or don’t believe in it at all. But Luke and Leia have always been good at adapting and they always manage to squeeze time to talk to each other, whether it’s in the corner of a peace gala or in a dropship headed to the frontlines.
For those first few weeks, their conversations always seem to circle back around to the fact that they’re twins, and what this means for them both. In some ways, there’s not a lot to discuss; their bond goes deeper than blood or friendship, it runs through the songs of the Force, stronger than anything Luke has ever felt. One night, they spend hours comparing and trying to work out what was coincidence and what were actually latent Force abilities. They talk about childhood dreams of each other’s planets and how — despite both losing all they had once called home only hours before and the imminent threat — everything just felt right when they reunited on the Death Star. Like a small part of them had been missing until then, tied by invisible string to something very far away.
Outside of it connecting her to new twin, Leia does not seem interested in the Force. She listens intently when he tells her what he knows of the Force, but Leia has never wanted to be a Jedi. She is a politician, like the mother and father who raised her were. She spends her busy days on Coruscant and Chandrila and wherever else she’s required to go to build the fractured Republic her parents tried to save. She finds as much time as she can for him , but she finds time inside of that only to learn the basics of Jedi training, nothing more.
Luke understands. It’s alright. He’s sure more Jedi will resurface soon, now the Empire has been defeated. It’s just a matter of time.
—
The New Republic are slowly beginning to respect his wishes to spend less time on battlefields and at show-off political events, and more time trying to rebuild the Jedi and find its artifacts.
Ossus is the perfect place for his Jedi Academy. He considered one of the ancient buildings on Yavin IV, but he thought it best not to start the new Jedi in a place that had once staged war. The former Jedi Temple on Coruscant is, obviously, out of the question. Even if one was to ignore the modifications and mutilations Palpatine made to the building, even if some skilled builder could fix the temple-turned-palace, the Force still sings overwhelmingly wrong there. He can’t spend more than ten minutes in the building before he has the strongest headache and the overwhelming need to empty his stomach.
Ossus is new, hardly touched by war or industry, and safe. Near to enough hyperspace lanes to make it accessible, but far enough from major trade routes and major planets that nobody will have an easy time finding it. All it has is an unmanned landing zone and the barely-laid foundations of a Rebellion base that never was, and greenery and blue skies as far as the eye can see. The Force sings of nature and peace here, clearing his head and pleasing every one of his senses. It is a blank slate and it is beautiful.
It is a great shame, he thinks, that there’s nobody to share it with.
It’s been over four years since the Emperor’s death and in those four years, Luke has made as many public appearances as he could, showing that the New Republic support Jedi, that the Sith are gone, that it is finally safe. Yet not a single Jedi has resurfaced.
He tries not to think of the implications of this.
Instead, he tries harder to make himself known and to look for more knowledge to fill Ossus with. He ventures out to the furthest corners of the galaxy, following Republic reconnaissance and old legends as far as he can, then his senses when those fail. He finds something, occasionally, but he is hardly an archaeologist and he struggles. One time, he finds the ruins of a temple, the Jedi Insignia still carved into its walls. But it is hollow; raided by the Empire or scavengers or perhaps an ancient generation of Jedi, who thought their works would be safer in the Coruscant temple.
He returns to the not-yet-Academy, its temple barely half built, with a small haul of near-useless Jedi artifacts. He arranges them in his room, the only finished part of his dream, and tells himself that there will be people to share all this with, soon.
He is exhausted from weeks of travel and one too many stops to help with distress calls he couldn’t ignore and a final quick stop at Leia and Han’s apartment. He is exhausted and aside from Artoo and a few builder droids, very much alone.
He misses the quiet buzz of Leia and his baby nephew’s Force signatures. He even begins to miss the overwhelming static of being in a city of millions. He finds that a severe longing is growing in his heart, pushing at his chest to be heard. He longs for others like him, for the buzz of the Force nearby, for anyone to share these texts and artifacts and his own learning with.
Most of all, he longs to not be alone anymore.
He’s not quite sure what makes him do it — that aching need to be a part of something or a simple over-tiredness — but he gingerly picks up Ben Kenobi’s old comm and sends out a ping. He does not know who it will reach (if it will reach anyone), but he hopes it will find someone like him.
Hope is all Luke has.
—
Luke returns to his bedroom one night, after a month away from the Temple trying to help save a planet from an earthquake and the failed Imperial coup that followed. He is, as he too-often is upon returning home, completely drained and ready to pass out — when he sees the old comm blinking.
The tiredness in his blood completely evaporates as he remembers the ping he sent just over four weeks ago. He practically vaults across the boxes in his room to reach the comm faster.
It’s a message — from another Old Republic Jedi frequency! Luke can barely read the message through his excitement and he has to calm himself down enough to respond and begin chatting with the frequency.
Although they are vague in their answers, they tell him enough for Luke to know that this comm was not stolen and they are what they say. He knows he ought to be a tad more careful, but he trusts in the Force and its quiet push towards this Jedi (and wonders what he really has to protect here). He tells them the location of the not-yet-Temple, and they tell him they can be there in a few days.
The mysterious Jedi lands some days later in a battered Clone Wars-era Jedi ship, bright red and white against the daylight trees behind it; Luke hopes he at least shields some of his excitement at the sight.
He begins walking towards the ramp the second it lowers, and the Force sings with rightness as the Jedi steps down, blue-and-white montrals peeking out of a grey hooded cloak.
They meet a few steps from the ramp in a few moments of silence. Luke wonders how long it has been since the Jedi last saw another of her order, since she last felt the signature of someone like her — if the unidentifiable look in her eye and the signs of age in her face are anything to go off, he thinks it’s been a while.
She introduces herself first; Ahsoka Tano. She doesn’t quite catch his eye when he says Luke Skywalker in return.
He tells her how amazing this is — finally, someone who can help him! Someone who grew up in the Old Temple, too! Another Jedi, finally—
“I am no Jedi,” she interrupts. “Not anymore.”
Luke tries his best not to look at the two lightsabers on her belt.
“But I was a Jedi Padawan, once,” she cedes. “Maybe I can help you a little with…” she gestures to the unfinished Temple peeking out from behind the hills… “all this.”
—
Ahsoka visits little, but Luke relishes each time he feels another Force sensitive (so different from Leia’s muted, untrained signature so intertwined with his, and from Ben’s baby-young signature) enter the planet’s airspace. She tries her best to fill in the gaps in his knowledge, explaining the more obscure books to him and occasionally apologising for forgetting or not having paid attention in that lesson thirty-odd years ago. He assures her it’s fine and really, any information she has is incredibly appreciated. He’s surprised she remembers this much, really — she sometimes seems surprised with herself, too.
But he has few opportunities to ask questions, with how little they see one another. She seems to find visiting difficult and talking about the old Temple worse. She skirts questions about the Jedi she knew personally and tries to avoid mentioning her master entirely. Luke is not rude enough to ask what happened to him, so he assumes her master must have died in Order 66 or under the Inquisition. He similarly does not ask how she survived, nor why she does not consider herself a Jedi.
He somehow causes her enough pain as it is. When she thinks he is not looking, she stares at him with an incredible sadness. It takes him a while to place it, but it is the same sort of hopeful grief his new family on Naboo look at him with.
He hopes, one day, he will learn why.
—
With the Academy fully built and entirely empty, Luke finds himself off-planet more and more often — so it’s a happy coincidence that he is at home meditating when he feels the pull.
It startles him at first, how novel the feeling of someone reaching out to him from across the galaxy like this is. At first he thinks it’s Leia, then Ben, but he would recognise their Force as easily as he recognises his own, so he knows this is someone new. Excitement fills him as he realises this, only for the connection to turn into something fearful — before cutting out entirely.
Luke does not understand what just happened in the slightest, but he knows one thing for certain; he must find this other Force-sensitive, and he must help them.
He grabs his emergency flight supplies, babbles a half-nonsensical explanation to an indignant Artoo and helps him into the X-wing, before setting off as fast as Artoo will allow him.
He follows the traces of the connection as best as he can and wonders if anyone would have been able to track such a Force signal back when Jedi had numbered in the thousands, or if it would have been lost in the static of all those lights that the Empire had snuffed out.
When his ship lands in an old Imperial cruiser, the small slither of connection brightens, and Luke knows he’s in the right place.
A platoon of black-plated trooper droids disagree with this, though. He makes short work of the Imperial droids, almost thankful for a problem he can just swing his lightsaber through for once. He continues following the signature through the corridors, slicing through the droids as they come, until he reaches a closed blast door that he knows leads to the cockpit.
The signature is bright here, more of an outright calling now. A couple of fearfully thankful feelings in the Force and an angry one — along with three peculiar blank spots — surround the little Force signature he’s been following. He stands outside the door, unsure whether to call out or cut through for a few moments, before the layers of blast door unfold to allow him in.
He recognises the source of the call as soon as he walks in; a child who looks like a much smaller, cuter, and smoother Master Yoda, hidden on a chair beside a silver Mandalorian.
Luke extinguishes his lightsaber, sensing no danger. The Mandalorian then asks if he is a Jedi, and Luke says he is. The child continues to call out to him, sending a message through the Force that he would like to go, yes he would, but he does not want to leave (upset?) his buir without asking. So Luke tells the Mandalorian this and promises the Mandalorian that he will give his life to protect the child, but he can only be safe if he is trained.
The Mandalorian picks the child up to say his goodbyes and the child babbles something back. Luke does not understand the great significance the room feels when the Mandaloria's helmet is removed, but he certainly understands the overwhelming love the Mandalorian and his child feel for each other. And as Luke’s first student toddles over to join him, Luke makes a mental note that there might be a rule he needs to change.
—
Little Grogu is a welcome addition to the sort-of-Academy, now a complete building with an as-complete-as-possible library and classrooms — although they tend to forgo the indoors, instead training in the forests and grasses behind the Temple. He realises this teaching thing is harder than it looks, especially when your student has more interest in eating the planet’s frogs than in the Force, but he teaches Grogu as much about the Force and Jedi as he can manage.
There is one thing he does not teach, though. The old Order raised younglings away from their parents and banned attachments (a topic Ahsoka tends to avoid), but Luke knows his new order has to be different — and so Grogu’s father is just as welcome as his son. He’s a mysteriously fascinating man, a beskar-plated gap in the Force who wields a dark saber, not light. He reveals to Luke that it makes him Mand’alor, King of the Mandalorians, a title he wants precisely nothing to do with.
He stays some time, long enough for Luke to learn all that, and long enough for Luke to offer to teach him some saber stances, if he wants. He’s almost surprised when the Mand’alor — Din, he finally reveals his name as — accepts.
It’s nice to have another person to share his knowledge with, even if Din's not really Luke’s student and certainly not Jedi. But they share something deeper, a certain recognition of the same struggle; they both must rebuild their peoples, destroyed by untold massacres and cultural obliteration, and lead whatever is to come, even if Din doesn’t seem to accept that that is what he is to be doing.
He leaves eventually, accepting in some small part that he has a duty to his clan and that Grogu is doing well here. He updates Luke on the campaign for Mandalore and in turn Luke updates him on Grogu’s progress. Din promises to visit as soon as he can and makes sure Luke knows that he is always welcome on Mandalore.
It’s taken over five years, and one and a half students isn’t much, but Luke supposes it is far better than nothing.
—
Luke knows only a little of the quest Ahsoka has been on for the past decade or so. She only mentions it in passing when they see one another and never updates him over comm, so Leia is the one to tell him that reports say Ahsoka is somewhere deep beyond wild space trying to stop the return of Grand Admiral Thrawn. Luke does not recognise the name, so he spends the rest of the evening researching this so-called heir to the Empire and just about manages to avoid feeling like he was left out.
Leia’s also the one to first tell him, some weeks later, that Ahsoka has finally reported back to an Outer Rim New Republic base. After a lengthy debrief (that almost turned into a court martial trial), a full report of Ahsoka’s mission to another galaxy and back is written and Luke learns she was successful: Thrawn has been returned to his own people, who have assured the Republic that he will be punished on their behalf and that he will never set foot in their galaxy again. Leia seems to doubt there will be any sort of diplomatic relationship with this far-away Chiss Ascendancy, but she trusts that Thrawn will not be a problem again and reports speak highly of the human that negotiated on the Ascendancy’s behalf, even though it seems he’d once been an Imperial aide to Thrawn.
Luke expects this is all he will learn of this highly redacted event — so he’s surprised when Leia’s call is almost immediately followed up by a message from Ahsoka.
Her message seems happy, in a way Luke has never known her to be. She tells him that she learnt a great deal in the past months, she needs to tell him something, and that she’ll be bringing company.
He half-expects Ahsoka to leave it at that and not elaborate on what “company” is — but this new Ahsoka does not leave him in such mystery. Company is another Jedi, finally freed from his stranding deep space! Ezra Bridger, an old friend of hers from the Rebellion, she says. He isn’t sure how to respond, so he settles for something between the response of a serene Jedi master and an over-excited child.
When he stands waiting for Ahsoka’s ship to land, Grogu snuggled in his arm, he is less than willing to admit how nervous he is. Luke heard Ezra’s name spoken from base to base back in the Rebellion. The Jedi who sacrificed his life for the freedom of Lothal, just as Ezra’s master sacrificed his life for him and their rebel cell. Luke — coincidentally born only days after him — felt the enormity of Ezra’s shadow from very early on. In his early rebellion years, Luke told no-one that he was training to be a Jedi, preferring people compare him to other pilots than some legendary rebel Jedi.
As he watches the ship enter the landing pad, he tries to remember his own merits, before trying harder to remember that a Jedi should not feel such things. He stands up straighter (and mumbles an apology to Grogu when the child stirs with the movement.)
Finally, Ahsoka steps off the ship in a clean white robe, a stark difference from her usual solemn greys, followed by a figure in bright orange with a curly mop of dark blue hair.
Ahsoka — smiling, to Luke’s great shock! — introduces them both and they shake hands, neither really sure how proper Jedi are supposed to greet one another.
Luke gives Ezra a tour of the academy and apologises for the state of some of the yet-to-be-used rooms. Luke feels Ezra’s happiness at the sight of the Temple as much as he sees it in his face. The Force around him with something like could be home and someone else would be happy to see this.
Luke cooks his guests dinner, an old Naberrie recipe from Grandma Jobal — Ahsoka smiles nostalgically when he sets their bowls down and tells them the recipe’s origin. He wonders for a moment if her master was from Naboo, but he’s quickly distracted by the lively conversation that sparks up, and Luke thinks he’s grinning or laughing for the entire meal. Ezra is more like Leia’s silly teenage stories than the Alliance’s whispered legends and the three of them swap stories long into the night, basking in each other’s Force and the warmth of the kitchen.
As Luke sits next to Ezra’s bubbly-bright Force signature and Ahsoka’s newly upbeat signature, he smiles. He knows they’re going to get on great.
—
Ezra’s mother — adoptive, Luke finds out, when he meets the bright green Twi’lek general — arrives a couple days later to take him home, but Ahsoka curiously chooses to stay longer. He wants to ask why, but he knows not to push his luck and happily agrees to her helping Grogu train for the day. She teaches him some tricks Luke has never seen in a textbook and says her master taught her them, without any of that ancient sadness in her eyes.
After Grogu’s gone to sleep, she sits Luke down in the Temple courtyard, under the watchful eye of the Ossus sunset. And she tells him who she really is and why she has been so vague these past few years. She tells him that she left the Jedi shortly before the fall of the Republic and that her master did not die in Order 66. She tells him that her master was Anakin Skywalker, her grand-master Obi-Wan Kenobi (she pauses for a moment after this, to allow Luke a second to process the enormity of what she has just said.) She tells him that she fought Vader once and that she knows what her master became — a knowledge she has spent over a decade trying to ignore. Her recent journey has allowed her to make peace with it, she says with a soft smile, and she is very sorry it has taken this long and that it took this much for her to tell him, but she hopes he can forgive her.
When she finishes, her Force presence is apprehensive, maybe even fearful. She looks at Luke carefully, like she is preparing for a sudden anger or a grand outburst — but all Luke can do is smile. He throws his arms around her in the biggest hug he can manage. She tries to apologise again, but Luke just thanks her.
Maybe a time for anger will come later, if he allows it. For now, all he feels is elation that he finally has someone that can tell him stories of his father that aren’t Vader’s exploits or Clone Wars propaganda. He thinks of all the questions he’s wanted to ask and he doesn’t know where to start — so he giddily admits this to Ahsoka.
“I have some old training holos of him,” she says in unsure reply, “if you’d like to see them?”
Luke says yes faster than he even thought possible.
—
Ezra and Ahsoka move into the Academy shortly after their first visit together and slowly, they gain more and more students; “more and more” is still very few, but it's a certain improvement from one-and-a-half.
None of them are Seekers — a type of Jedi in the old order, Ahsoka explains, who could sense young Force sensitives from across the galaxy. Luke is really rather terrible at it, despite the fact he can sense his friends and family from lightyears across the galaxy. Ahsoka says his father was the same; unable to sense Jedi he did not know through the supernova of his own presence. She mumbles something about Mortis and one-quarter-Force, but Luke can’t make sense of it and decides not to ask again.
Lacking that Seeker ability, the first few students they find by accident or personal connection. Leia finds a Force sensitive teenager from the New Alderaan colony, Luke meets a young Togruta at a New Republic airbase. Ezra’s younger brother (his master’s son, Luke finds out) joins not too long after Ezra himself. A few of the children come to them, their parents having heard stories of the old Jedi or Luke and contacting the Republic for help with their strange magic child.
Though the three of them know not to wait around for students to simply appear. They follow new folk stories and myths, tales of Force-addled miracles. It mostly brings them to ancient artifacts and the occasional crumbling Temple — but it brings them the odd student, like a young Pantoran girl who accidentally called a great beast into her home while having a tantrum. They continue to follow the stories, and the Academy continues to grow.
—
They are following one of these stories when they come across tales about a Jedi survivor that might have been spotted again recently, but seemed to have disappeared for some years around the first Death Star and the true civil war.
His… resumé, Luke supposes you could call it, is impressive. He fought with all sorts of rebels, in the years before the Rebellion was anything remotely organised and instead consisted of a bunch of infighting cells. More prominently, he has about a hundred wanted posters to his name or description, from criminal syndicates, angry aristocrats, and just about every branch of the Empire that ever existed. It makes sense, therefore, that he is a hard man to find.
Ezra (who is most certainly not jealous of all these wanted posters) points out that for all they know, one of the bounties could have been successful and this Jedi could be dead. But again, the Force seems to hum in this direction and Luke has always trusted its tiny half-signs, so they look harder.
It’s an two-decade-old ISB file from some now-dead undercover agent and classified under at least ten different security protocols that finally gives them a lead. The planet that’s half-implied to maybe be the Jedi’s home is so small that it’s missing from half the star maps they find, but General Syndulla knows some rumours and Ezra’s (Mandalorian!) sister can crack any puzzle-map, so it’s not long before their lead becomes a real location.
Luke and Ezra aren’t sure what they’re walking into when they land just outside a small settlement on the planet Koboh, so they keep alert beneath their cloaks. The people they come by are as friendly as they are wary when they say most folk hang around the saloon, the best place to get a drink or a decent meal — and hopefully, Luke thinks, a proper conversation or a few good rumours.
They get a few strange looks as they enter the saloon, more curious than anything. It seems strangers are welcome here, if somewhat rare.
The bartender droid makes some idle chat when they come to stand by the bar, asking if they’ve come far and what brings them to Koboh. Luke and Ezra have never really known how to start subtly, so they decide to outright ask if the bartender’s ever heard the name Cal Kestis.
Luke wishes he had his sister’s political guile when everyone in the saloon immediately silences their conversations to listen in to what he’s asking; even the DJ stops the music for a beat. Those nearest to Luke and Ezra quickly mumble an insistence they’ve never heard that name before and they really think the two of them should look elsewhere.
But Luke realises that the feeling beneath their words is a the defensive warmth, as if every single one of them is protecting someone loved and familiar.
“We’re Jedi,” Luke adds, and both he and Ezra move away from the bar a little, making the lightsabers at their belts visible.
Some of the patrons hide their wary-surprise well, but none can hide it as thrums through the Force. Their surprises are all mixed with some deep understanding and hope (for someone?) — though none stronger than the feelings of short, grey-haired Latero by the bar, whose shock-understanding-hope is mixed with an old and heavy grief.
His beady eyes inspect them carefully, before widening in recognition. “You’re that Jedi from the holonet, aren’t ya?” the Latero says, “the one who killed Vader?”
Luke swallows as he makes himself nod an I am to that question.
The Latero — Greez, he soon introduces himself as — seems satisfied with the answer and says yeah, he can help, so they follow him out of the saloon and towards a small ranch. Soon, Luke sees a man with a shock of ginger hair and grease smudging his poncho-like robe as he fixes some equipment and happily chats to the person next to him.
As Greez, Ezra, and Luke step close enough to almost hear the chatter, the man stops talking and stiffens for a moment. His shoulders move quicker. Slowly, he turns to face them and Luke feels a third Force signature pushing at his and Ezra’s, like it’s seeing if they’re real, like it hasn’t felt something like them in a very long time. The man’s eyes — Cal Kestis’s eyes, Luke realises — catch on their lightsabers.
Greez breaks the silence by introducing them all. Cal just about manages to lift his gaze to their faces when Greez suggests they sit down to talk on a nearby bench-table.
Before they ask Cal to come with them, Luke and Ezra tell him of the academy, of their few students, and of New Republic’s promise to help the Jedi but to stay out of their affairs. They tell him of the library and the artifacts and and most importantly, they tell him it’s not just him and Ezra teaching; they have a third master, Ahsoka, another Jedi from the old order.
Cal nods slowly to all of this and says little, his earlier chattiness seemingly gone. When they eventually stop, running out of things to say, his expression is entirely unreadable.
His Force seems hesitant, though not in the way Ahsoka once was. No, it seems almost like he is scared and Luke cannot tell what Cal lacks faith in; himself, or this promise of the Jedi’s return.
Cal tells them he’ll think about it and Greez, with a trace of something sad and unexpectedly disappointed in his voice, tells them they can stay the night here, free of charge and that dinner’s on him (Luke has an unfortunate feeling that it’s because of the half-true Vader killing thing).
They awkwardly take the dinner in the saloon, really not sure what to do with the unconvinced answer or how they expected this to go. Luke supposes he didn’t expect a suddenly joyous yes-yes-yes, but he thinks he expected some relief at the Jedi not being a sole survivor anymore, or something along the lines Ahsoka’s half-committed offer to help all those years ago.
Luke’s about to ask Ezra what he thinks they should do next, when a woman with grey-marked, bone-white skin comes to stand by their table. Luke tries not to be startled by her odd Force presence. It’s not Light, not Dark, nor like Din’s beskar gap in the force; it’s more like her Force signature is written in a language Luke hasn’t yet learned to read. (Ezra later mumbles something about her being a Nightsister and Luke only has about 20% of an idea of what that means.)
She speaks softly as she tells them “Cal will come around soon. He has… been through much and lost many. But he will always be a Jedi, even when he is not sure himself. He will come around to joining you.”
Luke nods, and knows somewhere in his heart that the words are true.
—
The Nightsister turns out to be right. It takes only a couple days on Koboh — a couple days of Cal distantly probing Luke and Ezra’s Force signatures like a child reaching for something in the dark and warming up to his (apparently usual) friendliness — for Cal to agree to follow them to the academy. Greez pilots him there and the mysterious Nightsister Merrin insists she is coming with him.
The sight of the Temple building seems to fill Cal with equal parts awe and fear. He does not seem to trust the concept of a safe home all that much, and perhaps trusts the survival of this new Jedi Order even less. Yet he says he will stay. He will… try to help them, he says.
Had Luke not known how hesitant Cal was, he would have thought Cal had always wanted to be here, given the way the friendly Jedi fits into the academy so well. He’s a good teacher (a fun one, too) and he shows the students an impressive mastery of lightsaber forms, even if Ahsoka insists at least a quarter of them are made up. He picks up knowledge and techniques almost too quickly; part of his psychometry, Cal explains, a rare Force ability to see the past through objects. That ability (and startling ability to traverse ruins as well as an apparent complete lack of a fear of heights) makes him very good at finding more Jedi artifacts, ones that Luke had no hope of reaching when he used to search for them. The academy’s collection near-doubles with Cal’s help.
Merrin — Cal’s wife, he eventually admits when he finds that the new Order has equally new views on attachments — slowly becomes less mysterious too. She tells Luke and the students about her culture and Force magic; following neither ‘side’, a use of the Force in its very own category. She tries to teach Luke some tricks, but he he is strangely unable to do any of them. Ahsoka explains something to Merrin after that, and the Nightsister looks at him very weirdly for a few days.
Luke isn’t sure when it happens, but one day he finds that hesitation in Cal’s Force presence gone, replaced by a happy embrace of the academy. On Greez’s next visit, he brings a mountain of meals for the academy and three slightly-singed Jedi texts, which Merrin and Cal gingerly offer to the library. Luke doesn’t need Cal’s psychometry to understand that the texts mean a great deal to them and perhaps meant a great deal to someone they knew, and what it means that they’re trusting them here.
He knows there are days when Cal still fears this new order will fall — only because he too has those days of fear, just as Ahsoka and Ezra do. But they persevere and they hope and they help each other through it, because hope and each other is what they have now.
—
It’s a soft, sunny day on Ossus and all the students don’t seem pleased with the idea of being cooped up inside with such good weather, so they decide to eat lunch on the green in front of the Temple.
Some students finish their food a little too quickly and get up to run after each other and play. Luke's sure Grogu will waddle after them soon, having gotten over the excitement of seeing his buir a couple of days ago.
A quick call comes from beside him when Ahsoka spots one student misusing her teachings in the Force — but when Luke turns to look at her, her face has settled into a gentle smile as she watches the younglings with care.
Across from him, Cal is telling a (probably very censored, given Merrin’s amused expression) story to the kids still sat down or eating. They keep asking questions and gasping or laughing at the events, and Cal fields them all happily.
His story winds on to one of the old Order — yet no sadness sparks in Cal or even in Ahsoka, half-listening to the side. When Cal mentions a fellow youngling named Caleb, Ezra begins listening so intently that he’s completely unaware of one of his lothcats grabbing a bite of his lunch.
Luke shuts his eyes for a moment, as he basks in the sun and reaches out into the Force. A dozen signatures flicker around him, all so unique and bright and at such different levels of training.
Luke opens his eyes to see the students still happily playing, and his fellow masters still chatting. He knows that they are not many and that they are still so fragile — yet the Temple is no longer empty, the artifacts and books are no longer useless, and the Jedi are no longer gone, and Luke can’t help the smile that spreads on his face.
He is no longer alone.