Luke had been minding his own business. This was not his fault. He refused to take any blame for what happened. How was he supposed to know this would happen?
He had just been stopping at a remote planet at the edge of the outer rim to refuel after a successful mission. Nothing wrong with that, is there?
Honestly, he had been hungry and thirsty. There had been at least nine hours to kill waiting for repairs and refueling. Of course, he had gone to the local pub. Of course, he listened to the bitter man at the back who told him his sob story about how an excavation went wrong and how he had lost countless friends.
Of course, he listened to the man who accidentally stumbled upon an ancient Sith temple.
And of course, he had gone to investigate said ancient Sith Temple because he was Luke fucking Skywalker. Dumbass ideas were his specialty. Plus, he had time to kill.
Why not go investigate without bringing any supplies or weapons besides his lightsaber? It wasn't like he was going to go deep into the temple. It wasn't like he was going to get trapped in the temple for an undetermined amount of time.
He was just going to go into the entrance and scope it out with the force to see what kind of threat it held for the natives of the planet, nothing more.
Luke really should have done more research on who the mining company who had discovered it was. He also really should have suspected something when the term 'mining company' was used. He should have asked for names.
Nearly a thousand years later and the Black Sun was still actively mining spice.
And where there was illegal spice mining taking place, there were illegal explosives and weak support beams.
He should have been more aware of his surroundings and less naïve because, of fucking course, something would go wrong.
After all, explosions are bad for infrastructure. Even thousands of years old Sith temple structure, which is made of super-secret Sith stuff, like darkness and the tears of small children gathered during the darkest of nights and the blood of enemies or some concoction to that effect.
...So maybe he might have a concussion, he dazedly thought as he stared up at the hole where the floor had given up its battle with gravity.
With a pained groan, Luke got up and made his way through the temple.
The dark energy of the temple pressed against his at all sides, giving him a terrible headache and a terrible feeling of being watched, judged.
Walking through the temple, he couldn't help but wonder if it had once been beautiful. Luke had found that usually the most dreary of places had almost always been beautiful once. It was like the universe decided that every good thing should be corrupted. Like many force temples, the lightsaber burns and slashes on the walls attested to the fact that something terrible happened here. The rubble, slumped skeletons and a general feeling of horror and fear also might have played a factor in it.
Luke looked away from a tiny hand underneath a large piece of rubble and sped up his pace.
Finally, he got to a door.
Laying his hand on it, Luke closed his eyes and reached out with the force, prying the old door open.
Taking a deep breath, he stepped through the door and looked around.
It was a large room with no doors. Carvings lined the walls and ceiling in a spiraling circle that never ended. Pipes and cables lay on the floor, flowing to the center in which stood sixteen coffin-like...things.
Luke had no idea what they were but they looked ominous. To his left stood a control panel, most of it fried beyond use. He walked over and started to fiddle around. Maybe he would be able to find a holo or something to tell him what happened here. Or a neat little 'this does this and that does that' type of thing.
He hissed and jerked his hand away as one of the panels sparked and shocked him. He tripped and nearly fell over, managing to barely steady himself on one of the broken panels, sharp pieces of metal cutting into his palm. The only consolation he had was that it thankfully it wasn't his mechanical hand, getting a replacement would be hell.
Except, the panels might not have been as damaged as first thought if the sudden whirring behind him was any indication. Or it could have been the screeching of metal. Or the sudden thumps against durasteel.
Luke turned slowly towards them, now conveniently shown to be stasis pods. Mostly because two people fell out, a third was trapped inside a half-open one. The fourth person blew the door off his stasis pod. The two people who got out first connected with the force and helped pry the door off on the third pod.
Well. Fuck.
What did he just get himself into?