Rebel Pilot: A Star Wars Story

Chapter 8

Climbing out of their fighters, Luke and Anakin both received a hero's welcome, though Anakin purposefully stood back to give Luke his moment to be the hero. Laughter, cheers, and shouting echoed everywhere as the rebellion celebrated.

"Luke!" Leia's voice exclaimed, and Luke turned to see her running towards him. She enveloped him in a hug. "I heard it was close. I swear if I lost my long lost twin brother as soon as I learned he existed..."

"Honestly, I thought I was going to die for a moment there too." Luke laughed. "It's good to be back!"

Han ran through the crows towards Luke, embracing him and patting him on the back. "You did good out there, kid! Real good."

"I knew you'd come back!" Luke exclaimed through his joyous laughter. "I just knew it!"

"Well, I wasn't about to let you get all the credit and take all the reward," Han said, giving Luke one last slap on the back.

"I knew there was more to you than money," Leia said with a smile, tilting her head as she looked at Han as though she was seeing him for the first time - or perhaps seeing something new in him that she hadn't seen before.

"So how did grilling Obi-Wan go?" Anakin asked with a smirk.

Leia huffed in frustration. "He doesn't seem to have any real good reason to just fling Luke and I to separate parts of the galaxy, let one of us keep our last name and the other go be raised as royalty, and lie about what really happened to our parents! I keep asking him how you turned to the dark side too, and he just flat out doesn't know . Like, how can you be entirely sure your friend is beyond saving and all that if you don't know?!"

"His ability to spew total bantha crap and make it sound vaguely sensical is one of his best talents," Anakin remarked. "It's why they call him 'The Negotiator.' Or, well, called him, I guess."

Han snorted. "Now that's the truth. Honestly, I was never really into politics and stuff. I was more impressed by pilots than diplomats."

"I can't tell if I should be flattered that you're praising me or offended that you're dissing my wife," Anakin said.

Han's eyes widened. "I wasn't dissing your wife, General Skywalker! I'm just - not into politics." He cleared his throat.

Anakin laughed. "Relax, I was joking. And you can call me Anakin."

Han smiled. "Of course, Anakin." He made it sound nonchalant, but through the Force Anakin could tell how giddy he was to be on a first name basis with him. Anakin knew arrogance could be a flaw of his, but he couldn't help but feel proud of that.

"Did you get anything out of him at all?" Luke asked Leia.

"Well, I got a few stories that I could definitely use to blackmail Anakin, but he successfully evaded telling me anything useful ."

Anakin's jaw dropped. "What exactly did he tell you? I never did anything that bad."

"You crashed half of an enormous Seperatist battleship that was never meant to enter or leave atmosphere right on Coruscant's capital, directly in front of the senate building," Leia stated.

"...It was his idea! Mostly! He asked me if I would pilot the ship when it was going down! I bet he didn't tell you that!" Anakin exclaimed defensively.

"You once almost killed Obi-Wan while trying to get revenge for... Obi-Wan," Leia added.

"...Okay, he did not tell you the full story there. He faked his death . And went undercover as the guy who allegedly killed him! So, yeah I tried to kill him for revenge!"

"You once made out with Padmé in a room with a really big window and most of your clone troop plus your padawan Ahsoka all saw this and paid everyone the money they were due. Obi-Wan lost, having bet you two would control yourselves better." Leia smirked.

Anakin sputtered. "That didn't happen! ...Did it?"

"You once grabbed a random Jedi padawan and dragged her down the hallway back towards your quarters while lecturing her only to look down and find that it was not Ahsoka, but rather a poor unsuspecting twi'lek who was just looking for her master."

Anakin's cheeks flushed. "Well, I bet Obi-Wan didn't tell you about Cato Neimoidia."

Leia's eyes widened. "Oh? What happened there?"

Anakin smirked. Time for revenge.

—

"Alright." The man standing in front of Anakin wasn't someone he recognized, but his voice sounded like the man who had carried the callsign Red Ten. "So, now that the battle is over and the Death Star's gone and all that, is someone going to explain how the kriff General Skywalker is here? And you know, why he's twenty? And apparently this kid" –he gestured to Luke– "is his son?"

"It's rather quite simple," Anakin said, not really feeling like dragging it out and making it dramatic. "I'm from the past."

"Impossible!" Someone else Anakin didn't recognize at all shouted. "Time travel is impossible!"

"I know." Anakin shrugged. "It happened anyway. The Force likes to do weird things to me sometimes, though this is by far the weirdest."

Red Leader – Garven Dreis, Anakin remembered, the one he'd met when he was younger – inserted himself into the conversation. "You saw his flying," Dreis said. "And his perfect shots. And his dangerous but effective maneuvers... and the way he casually told Luke to use the Force. Also, he has a lightsaber on his belt. How else do you explain this?"

At the mention of his lightsaber, Anakin pulled his off of his belt, igniting it. When everyone gasped, he showed off a little, spinning it around his back and ending in a defensive position before relaxing and turning it off. "Look, I wouldn't believe anyone if they said they were from the past, so I don't blame you guys, but unless I'm hallucinating this whole thing, which the Force says I'm not, I have no other explanation for how I'm here, at the same age I was supposed to be 20 years ago in this time."

"Oh," Leia said, remembering something. "Luke, you asked me to hold onto your lightsaber. I have it here, if you want to use it for proof."

"Oh yeah! Thanks Leia!" Luke ignited his lightsaber, which was really Anakin's but in the future, though he didn't seem nearly as sure with how to hold it. "See, it's the same one." He turned it off and held up the hilt, and Anakin followed suit. "It belonged to my father. It is literally the same design, if you want to look closer."

"I remember meeting General Skywalker when I was young," Dreis added. "This is definitely him."

Incredulous acceptance of the situation radiated off of everyone gathered, but the good news was that they seemed to believe him. "Oh, and while we're doing this," Leia said with shrug, "Luke is my long lost twin brother!" She announced. "So, I'm also technically a Skywalker!"

The crowd shifted back to disbelief.

"She looks a lot like my wife, so while I have no proof of that, I'm going with it," Anakin said with shrug.

"Aha! He's lying! General Skywalker didn't have a wife!"

Anakin sighed. "I'm glad that at least someone seemed to be fooled by our totally believable subtlety , but no, I pretended not to have a wife because it was against the Jedi Code . Senator Padmé Amidala, if you know who she is."

Murmurs now started. Leia sighed. "Look, it's kind of common knowledge that I'm not a biological Organa. I just didn't know who my real parents were. Now I know."

"Look, I wanna go find Obi-Wan and ask him questions that make him very uncomfortable. Believe us, don't believe us, but you can do a DNA test if you really need to prove it that badly. Great flying, by the way, you're all real decent pilots." Anakin acknowledged them all. "May the Force be with you all." And then he just turned around and walked away, Luke and Leia in tail.

"I'm hanging back," Han muttered. "Force knows I'm done with their family drama."