Archive of Our Own ^beta

Luke will reach for you—whether through the Force or memory—whenever he needs to slip into serenity. When he’s burning and crumbling under the pressure of rebuilding the Jedi Order, his newfound fame from destroying two Death Stars, killing the emperor, losing his father, navigating this new world of politics he’s been roped into, your presence is simultaneously the earth under his feet and water soothing the fire. 

When he’s in combat and knows a blow is about to land that he can’t escape, he retreats into the comforting memory of your skin against his. How smooth and soft you are against his desert-roughened hands, every scar, pockmark, mole, freckle, joint, and curve takes him to a place where he can handle the pain of blaster fire. The smell of your skin brings him far enough home that the tip of a blade is barely noticeable. Every time he traces your skin, he swears to himself he will never take it for granted—memorizes every texture, bump, and dip with his fingers and lips to recall at a moment’s notice. When you steal his shirts, he’ll wear them for a day or two after you return it in case he needs to retreat into his elbow or hide his face in his hunched shoulders to prepare for the blow and be surrounded by the comfort of your scent. It takes him into another world where the pain is merely an annoyance that can be easily overcome. 

When a medical droid removes his cybernetic for maintenance, he’ll reach for the taste of your lips on his. Screwing his eyes shut and licking his lips as the droid gives it a bit too rough of a yank that jerks him forward. He won’t open his eyes to look at the stump of his wrist, but it makes it easier to imagine you in front of him, thumbs gently tracing his cheekbones, fingertips traveling over the line of his jaw, a barely-there touch playing with his bottom lip. It’s so accurate in his mind, any passersby would think he was as calm and serene as the Jedi of old—that he was using some ancient meditation technique that allowed him to fall deep into the Force, but really he’s just falling deep into you. Because it’s always been you and it will always be you. 

When he’s sitting down to meditate after a stressful day of preparing his Jedi academy, helping the New Republic root out remnants of Empire, with flashes of lightning and the light fading from his father’s eyes in equal intensity, he remembers the softness of your hair. The smell of the products you use and how it wafts over to him whenever there’s a breeze in a perfect combination that fills his lungs with hope. He has no idea how you always manage to smell incredible, but there’s just an element of magic to you that the Force has no answer for. From the moment he met you, he knew there was stardust in your veins and fire in your soul he wanted to warm himself in every night for the rest of his life. He longs for the days when you can just run your Jedi school together in peace, watch the padawans flock to and love you how he knows they will because you’re you, and the idea of you becoming a second mother and mentor to all the young ones nearly fills his eyes with tears. On a day where you’re no longer separated so much of the time, he knows your students will take comfort in your smell just as much as he does—walk into your scent and associate it with love, safety, warmth, and acceptance just like him. 

When the nightmares and insomnia take hold, he imagines your fingers in his hair, gently massaging the dark thoughts from his mind. The way the blunt end of your fingers scratch and run through his strands from root to tip is unparalleled to anything he’s ever felt. And when your hands travel from his hair to his neck to scratch over the scars on his back—none of the massage therapists Leia recommended to mitigate his pain could compare. He always promises himself he won’t fall asleep with his head in your lap when you begin, but is snoring contentedly within minutes. His only regret is he’s not always fully awake to appreciate the way you gently trace lines over his face, neck, and chest, your warm hands a balm on his lightning scars. Even when you’re not calling on the Force to heal, just you—you are all he could ever need to bring him peace through the pain. 

He holds you in his mind, his eyes, his brain, his whole chest, from the crown of his head to the tips of his toes—he would cocoon himself around you forever if he could. The Old Jedi Code forbade anything like this and he knew if Ben or Master Yoda were alive, they’d chastise him for the way he breathes you like oxygen and gets drunk on just the thought of your smile, blacks out at the sound of your laugh, has to remind himself he is a full being with a real body and life is real when the breeze and sun hit you just right. But he couldn’t imagine a life without this sort of love. He is the master of his ship in a way his father wasn’t, but to never see the ocean would be a life not fully lived. How could he ever deny his students and future members of the New Jedi Order this kind of bliss? If—Maker forbid—he ever lost you, he would be devastated and not sure he would ever truly finish grieving for you. But he knows he will always find you in the Force and to know he even had the sort of love, care, and companionship you give him for a snapshot in time would make him feel like the luckiest man in the galaxy. Knowing you is a privilege, and being allowed to hold you is a gift unlike any other and he will not squander it while he still has breath in his body. 

He sometimes wonders if this is how Anakin felt for his mother—and if he’d been allowed to indulge in that love with a protective sphere from the Jedi order, if he’d just been allowed to speak on his fears of losing her without speaking in riddles, if maybe they’d all been able to put two and two together and realize these dark visions and forebodings the Council was feeling were a tightly wound rope, then maybe he never would’ve been consumed by Vader. If Luke and Leia could’ve grown as siblings were supposed to and trained at the Jedi Temple on Coruscant, if he could’ve known his mother outside of holos and stories. But then he might never have met you, and the thought of that tears into his stomach in ways that make him almost thankful for how the darkness has played itself out. 

For moments you’re gone from him, the reach does what it can—but nothing will ever compare to having you there before him. Memories of loneliness, isolation, name-calling, rumor-spreading, Wormie wracked his brain for so many years he thought he would never have this. It forces him to understand how vital it is that he holds your hand in meetings, pulls you into a secluded corner to kiss you at the first opportunity, worships you in his arms all night, absorbs the life you breathe into any space with complete selfishness as he tells you how easy you are to love. How you’re gorgeous inside and out with an effortlessness that punches the air out of him, the only antidote breathing in more of you. How he wants to listen to you talk about your day, your hobbies, your thoughts, your jokes, how he wants a constant loop of your laugh playing in his head for endless hours, how even you in your shadows is a work of art and that you’re not broken and don’t need fixing. But if you still need some pieces held together, he will happily hold out his hands and cradle you so gently and tightly, just as he knows you would do for him. 

Because love is never simple, but he couldn’t imagine not knowing it fully and completely from someone like you. And for that, Luke will always reach.