this is a disclaimer.

in a house without feelings

Luke wakes one night in the breezy Coruscant semi-darkness to a scrabbling at his bedside and a hand grabbing his hip.

He groans softly, face mashed into the pillow. It's been a long day, and it's going to be a longer day tomorrow. Later on. Whichever.

"Laney?"

It's a fairly safe guess; Laina's the only one of the kids who has nightmares fairly often. Or at least, Luke thinks, if Ben or May get them, then they're getting their comforting from an authority higher than that of their parents.

But somewhat to his surprise, his visitor climbs over him and settles in the space between Luke and Mara's respective pillows, something Lane never does; she snuggles under his arm and goes right back to sleep again, the mere presence of her parents enough to banish her demons.

"Not zac'ly," Ben says.

Luke props himself up on one elbow. Ben's face is a pale splotch in the dimness, but the confusion and the misery and the touch of fear is coming off him in waves. How the hell did he miss this when he said goodnight, Luke wonders, feeling guilty.

"Ben. C'mere."

Ben burrows under the covers instantly, tucking himself into the curve of his father's body. Luke draws the sheet over their heads and holds him close in silence; one of the things all three of his babies have in common – besides their red hair – is their refusal to be pushed into things. They talk when they're ready, just as they walked and got rid of their dummies and permitted their parents to potty-train them when they were ready. Not before.

Luke lies there and listens to Mara's steady breathing, Ben's quick heartbeat. Starts making lists in his head of the most unpleasant things he can think of, just to stay awake: fixing vaporateurs, top of the list since he was seven. Ambushes on planets with torrential rainfall. Mara in a bad mood. Leia in a bad mood. The state of his inbox. The meetings he'll be stuck in for most of tomorrow, arguing the case against permanently relocating the Jedi Order to Coruscant... he's a servant of the Force, not the kriffing Republic. If increasing numbers of students are coming to him from the Empire and going back there when they're Knighted, well, maybe that will actually help to keep the peace in this damn galaxy for a change. He's not going to turn anyone away on the basis of their political –

"I was thinking," Ben says.

"You know what Mom says about you and I doing that."

He thinks Ben grins, but of course he can't see him.

"That it's her job and not ours and we shouldn't bother our pretty little heads about important things anyway."

"Right."

"I was thinking about The Story."

In this family, there is only one Story, and it starts with an orphaned farmboy and ends with a miracle and so much love that Luke sometimes has trouble believing any of it was ever real.

"Which part, little one?" he asks gently. At seven, Ben's probably old enough to start worrying about things like Father and mechanical right hands and turning to the Dark Side, but he surprises Luke for the second time tonight when he bypasses the question of his grandfather entirely.

"You know when the farmboy was on the swamp planet training to be a Knight and he heard it through the Force that the princess and the smuggler were in trouble?"

It's an effort to suppress a shudder. Leia's helplessness and tightly controlled terror and Han's blind agony didn't echo through the Force to Luke all those years ago; they screamed. They scream still, sometimes, in his nightmares, in the dark, hidden recesses of his mind where he keeps his failures and his fears.

"Yes," he says, harsher than he intended, but luckily Ben doesn't notice.

"Yoda said you should have stayed."

"He did."

"But you didn't."

"No."

"So," Ben says, "you dis- disobeyed." He stumbles briefly over the unfamiliar word. "You disobeyed Yoda like everyone's always telling us not to do. But if you're a Jedi – then you listen to the will of the Force, right? And if the will of the Force had been telling you. Not to go. I mean." Ben squirms, worried, searching for words. "Was it right, Dad?" he bursts out. "Jasa says that doing the right thing is always the most important thing ever. But what if the right thing's not the same thing as the will of the Force? I mean. And you went to Bespin and fought Grandfather and Uncle Han got put in carbonite..."

He did, and Luke lost his hand and everything that was left of his innocence and Leia might have died there and the year that followed was a long and terrible one, full of darkness and danger and despair and only the very faintest glimmers of hope, like distant stars in the sky, the dim ones you can only see if you turn your head a bit and focus on something else entirely, and dear Force, were Luke and Leia focussing on other things in those endless days.

"Ben," he says, heart breaking, "Ben, I. You have to remember, I wasn't a very good Jedi, when I went to Bespin –"

"So a good Jedi would have stayed?" Ben demands, pouncing on Luke's weakness like a cat with its prey. "A good Jedi woulda stayed and trained and left Aunt Leia and Uncle Han to –"

"I didn't rescue anyone, don't forget," Luke says sharply. "They rescued themselves, and then they had to come back for me."

"A good Jedi," Ben says, more loudly now to get his point across to his impossibly dense father, "woulda not cared that his best friend was in trouble and his sister was hurt?"

Distantly Luke thinks, so this is a big brother thing, eh? but he's caught up in it now, and it's personal, and it hurts, dammit. Even after all this time.

"Yes," he says harshly. "Yes, Ben, a good Jedi would have stayed, and he would have trained, and he would have not cared that his sister was hurt because it wasn't part of the greater good and his mission – "

There's the snick of a light switch being turned, and the covers are pulled off them both with a sharp jerk. Ben jumps and rolls over; Luke looks up. Of course they've woken Mara; she's a far lighter sleeper than any of them, and right now, absolutely resplendent in her scruffy sleep shirt and her red hair glowing on her shoulders in the golden light.

"Ben," she says gently, "your Dad's right. A good Jedi would have stayed. And a good Jedi would have not cared."

Ben gulps, sits up, looks away, but his mother takes his face between her hands and tilts it up so that he has to look right at her and she smiles.

"A good Jedi would have stayed," Mara says. "A good man never would have."

Ben draws a breath. "And that's more important."

Mara nods. "Every time."

Ben thinks about this for a minute, absorbing the new idea in silence.

Then he nods back.

They smile at each other, mother and son. Luke puts his hand on Ben's back and smiles too, faint and hidden. He's about to say something to Mara when she gives Ben a tiny shove so that he falls over backwards on top of his father and points at the door.

"And now, out!"

"Out!" Ben objects, scandalised. "But Mom –"

"Don't you but Mom me, kid. Out, now, and take your damn father with you! Arguing Jedi philosophy at three in the morning. Un-be-liev-able."

Luke's jaw drops indignantly. "Mara –"

"Out, Skywalker" she repeats dangerously, "out or I'll throw you out. You can both bunk on the couch if you're going to spend the night bickering over family history."

Luke and Ben exchange a look.

"I suppose we could bunk on the couch," Luke says.

Ben nods. "I'll fetch my blankets."

"Oh, Farmboy," Mara calls after Luke sweetly just as he reaches the door.

He turns back to look at her, jaw set in a glare.

"You forgot this."

It turns out domesticity wreaks havoc on your reflexes. Luke's pillow catches him square in the chest, and he uses the Force to pick it up from the floor and shut the door behind him, struggling to keep his dignity intact in the face of Mara's badly-muffled laughter.

They bunk on the couch.

Ben sleeps like a log now that his questions are answered, sprawled heavy and warm on his father's chest, hair tickling Luke's chin. Luke dreams a jumbled, messy dream of Dagobah and Master Yoda and Mara standing on his X-Wing as it sinks into the swamp, pointing imperiously at a door standing by itself in the water that he knows will lead him back to Bespin and the same accursed ledge that's haunted his nightmares for decades –

He wakes up with a jerk and a harsh intake of breath, but it's not to Vader standing over him, ripping away every protection Luke has ever had by telling him the simple truth and holding out a hand in horrible parody of a gesture Luke had wanted to see his father make since realising he had a father. Rather the sunlight is streaming through the double windows to fall full on his face, and Maira is standing by the couch reaching out slowly and cautiously to drop a spoonful of cereal drenched in milk onto the back of her brother's exposed neck.

Luke closes his eyes and braces himself for the yelling, but an instant later he opens them again – over there wasn't that –

Ben lets out a bloodcurdling howl of wounded seven-year-old pride, kneeing Luke in the stomach when he tries to get off the couch and grab his sister at the same time. May races off with a triumphant war whoop, Ben hot on her heels. Luke doubles up with a groan of pain and puts the pillow over his face in a vain effort to make the world just go away already.

Mara looks entirely unsympathetic, but she does bring him a cup of caf, so he supposes he's forgiven.