Legacy of the Red Sun: The Complete Trilogy

A Star Wars/Smallville Crossover

Summary: Luke Skywalker died in a tragic speeder accident on Tattooine. Fate fills the gap by delivering to Obi-Wan a child with powers the likes of which the galaxy has never seen.

Note: This is a reposting of the Legacy of the Red Sun Trilogy. I have taken down the other two sections and will re-edit and repost them here as a single story, since the trilogy should be read together. Since this is a repost, I will post fairly quickly—a new chapter every other day as time permits. The original of this fic was beta read by Jedi-2B from the theforce dot net Jedi Council Forums, which is an excellent repository of Star Wars fan fics. It is a limited crossover with Smallville only in the sense that the Kal El in this story was based on Tom Welling's character from Smallville. However, no other Smallville characters will arrive. There will be other characters from Superman's backstory, with some elements taken from the movies as well.

The original story was rated T. However, this original rating was a mistake since there there are brief moments of graphic violence and at least one sex scene in the third part that has led me to reclassify it as M.

Disclaimer: Lucas owns all, except Superman. DC owns him. This story was written for my personal enjoyment and the enjoyment of any friends who wish to read.

Part One: Legacy of the Red Sun

Chapter One: While the Wind Blew

This was not how it was supposed to be.

Obi-Wan Kenobi, once a Jedi master and general of the Clone Wars, stood with tears streaming openly down his grizzled, bearded face as the sand and wind howled around his cloak and hood.

He knelt down by the mound of stone-covered sand and placed a hand on the capstone that would slow the erosion from the wind. No, this was not how it was supposed to be. Amidst all the darkness they had faced, all the tragedy and pain he and Yoda had suffered, there had always been this one gleaming beacon of hope.

He looked up at the other mounds. He had never been close to Owen Lars, but for Beru Obi-Wan always held a soft spot in his heart. She smiled at him whenever he snuck by to check on the boy, and for the first two months there, as he struggled to learn the rote of living on Tatooine, she had provided much needed food and shelter.

Now they, like the beacon that had been Luke Skywalker, lay under a mound of dirt and stone while the wind howled in maniacal triumph around them. Luke Skywalker, the last hope for the Jedi, was dead.

He died, of all things, in a speeder accident.

Some part of Ben wanted it to be a conspiracy. He wanted to find evidence of dark forces at work. He imagined the specter of Darth Vader reaching out to snuff out the life of his son, or the more facile, subtle and deadly embrace of the emperor trying to turn the young boy to darkness. Never in his life, though, would Ben have imagined Owen losing control and driving his speeder into a sandstone pillar.

The entire family was killed instantly, and it fell to Ben to bury them. It fell to Ben to carry the body of a four-year-old boy who had all the potential fate and the Force could pack into one beautiful child, and place him in the unforgiving void that was his grave. It fell to Ben to mourn not just the passing of three innocent lives, but also of the hopes of an entire galaxy. It fell to Ben to stand there now, weeping while the wind blew.

"I am sorry, Anakin," he whispered, though his voice was lost even to his own ears. Let the wind have the sound. It did not matter. They were words none should have heard anyway, not even the Force.

He turned from the graves, pulled his hood down, and began walking back to the Skywalker homestead while trying to figure out what to do next. Respectful of the former owners of the home, he prepared a small dinner from Beru's stores when he arrived and absently ate while he watched a local relay of the holonet.

The Empire had already shown its true colors in the bombardment of Caamas, and already opposition in the Imperial Senate was changing. Although the media reports were careful with their words, Obi-Wan knew enough to read between the lines at what was really happening. Opposition senators like Bail Organa kept their mouths shut and carried the party line, because all around them, those senators who did not vanished. Now was not the time for open rebellion—not yet, anyway.

"Leia," Obi-Wan whispered to himself.

He thought about going to Alderaan, but the Caamasi refugees had fled there, and tempers were too raw. Vader himself had gone to Alderaan just a few years back, and Obi-Wan could not risk being seen by his former apprentice. If he were, it might raise questions regarding the mysterious origins of Bail's four-year-old daughter.

Filled with a despair he had felt only once, four years prior as he walked away from the man he had raised and loved as both son and brother, Ben flipped off the feed and wandered aimlessly through the house, as if seeking answers from the empty walls.

He heard no voices, nor direction in the Force. He felt nothing but emptiness. It was with that sense of emptiness that Ben entered Luke's room and let himself down on the bed that young Luke had slept in for the four years of his life. It was an old hand-me-down bed, probably one slept on by Owen himself as a child. It had the musk of both man and child, and was filled with memories of dreams long past.

Ben turned on his side, closed his eyes, and wept himself to sleep.

~~Legacy~~

~~Legacy~~

Obi-Wan could not say how long he slept, or precisely what woke him. It might have been the howling of the wind outside, or perhaps a nearby crash. No, he thought, it must have been the braying of the sandpeople. Sandpeople, he noted with sudden alarm, who were very close to this home.

He picked himself up and ran out of Luke's room with his lightsaber in hand. What he heard next sounded incredulous to his ears: it was the sound of a gaffi rifle going off, followed by the angry cries of a human child.

Obi-Wan rushed outside and pulled his hood up over his face to ward off the sand storm. The two moons were obscured by the storm, throwing the night into an awkward blue hue without actually providing any light. It was the Force that Obi-Wan followed, lending direction to the sound of the child's crying and the guns going off.

When he arrived, he could believe neither what his eyes beheld nor what the Force told him. Who would believe that even Tusken raiders would be so cruel as to shoot a human child at point blank range again and again? Who would believe that the bullets from such shots would knock the child over and bruise him, but not penetrate?

The child's apparent unwillingness to die threw the Sandpeople into a fit as they rushed forward, swinging their oversized, archaic rifles and clubs. One hit the child square in the face and caused another angry, hurt cry. The second also came down, only to be caught and yanked away by a meaty, infant fist.

The Sandpeople backed away, stunned.

Obi-Wan, also stunned, recovered more quickly. He cupped both hands to his mouth and let out the hair-raising cry of a krayt dragon. Using the Force to augment his voice, the sound shocked the sandpeople out of their confusion and sent them scrambling toward their banthas.

Only then did Obi-Wan dare approach the child, who was now on his side crying in genuine pain. In the darkened, stormy night, it was difficult for Obi-Wan to make out any details, other than the child was either acting younger than his years, or was large for his age. In any event, he was naked save for a red baby blanket with an odd serpentine script or monogram on it that Ben had never seen wrapped around his meaty legs.

The baby saw the old Jedi and began crying in real need, pulling himself up into a sitting position while reaching out for the only comfort he could imagine. Obi-Wan responded in the only way he could, and reached in return. He lifted the child in his arms, wrapped him in his robes, and returned to the Lars homestead.

Once inside, Obi-Wan found Beru's old rocking chair and sat down with a reading lamp nearby to illuminate his discovery. The child was stunningly beautiful, with perfectly proportioned features, thick black hair and eyes so blue they seemed almost cosmetic, as if someone had fitted the infant with contact lenses. His arms and legs were thick with baby fat, and he looked in all like a perfectly healthy child.

Healthy, that is, save for the bruises. Obi-Wan traced a line of black bruises running across the baby's chest where the sandpeople had shot him, and the boy had a blackened eye and a cut on his cheek where he had been clubbed.

Even as Ben watched, though, the bruises on his chest were fading, and the cut on his cheek was sealing itself.

For the first time since finding the child, Obi-Wan opened himself to the Force, and gasped. Never had he sensed anything like the child in his lap. The baby shone like a beacon in the Force, more fiercely and brightly than anything he had ever encountered or even heard of. Not even Anakin had glowed like this baby. And, opened there to the Force, Obi-Wan felt the questing thoughts of another; a dark, evil presence that also sensed the beacon of Force energy and sought it out.

Thinking fast, Obi-Wan placed his hand on the baby's forehead, and as he had with Luke and Leia, shrouded the Force presence of the baby. The questing presence reached, failed to grasp its target, and then faded back into the Force.

Sighing with relief, Obi-Wan looked down at the baby. He estimated it was eight months to a year old, standard time. It looked back at him, no longer crying; no longer bruised.

"What are you, my boy?"

The boy grinned and leaned forward, wrapping Ben in a hug.

~~Legacy~~

~~Legacy~~

The next day the baby woke Obi-Wan by rolling until its back was against the adobe wall of Luke's room and stretching.

The stretching itself should not have woken the tired Jedi from his sound sleep. What woke him was the hard kick in his back that sent him sprawling onto the floor. Instinctively Obi-Wan leaped to his feet with his sword ready, only to see a pair of sleepy blue eyes regarding him. The eyes widened when the boy saw the sword, and he cooed.

"Ooonana!" the boy said, reaching.

"Yes, to be sure," Obi-Wan said with a touch of wry humor. He deactivated his blade, hung it back on his belt, and then rubbed at the sore spot on his back. This would be the last time he shared a bed with that particular child. "Well, boy, it appears you are stuck with me for the time being. Let's see what Beru has to feed us."

He found a bowl of sweetened grain nuggets and Luke's old booster seat. He had the baby sit up at the table with a bowl of the nuggets and a glass of blue milk while he fixed himself a cup of caf. The baby cooed as he began shoving fistfuls of food into his mouth.

A moment later Obi-Wan looked back in alarm at the sudden silence. He saw the baby staring at him with a look of intense concentration, and a second later the child did what babies do, and did so with a gusto that left the chair and floor thoroughly soaked. "Oh my," the old Jedi said.

With a grimace, Obi-Wan cleaned up the mess, and then took the stinking child to the fresher to do the same. There were no diapers in the house, so Ben did his best swaddling the child in a towel. Then they stepped outside into the searing Tattooine morning. The cold had long since burned away, and already the sand dunes were starting to shimmer with heat.

Obi-Wan carried the boy toward the spot where he had found him, and it did not take long to find the boy's ship. It was the size of a capitol ship escape pod, but one of a completely alien design. It was blackened from entry into the planet's atmosphere so obviously did not have any type of particle or ray shielding, but Obi-Wan could see where it had originally been spiked like a decorative star. Rather than open with a traditional hatch, the whole craft had broken in half, exposing a ring of beautiful white crystals and one green one.

"Very interesting," Obi-Wan whispered. He held out his hand, still leery of the ship, and summoned the green crystal with the Force. He held it a moment and felt within it vast, unbelievable amounts of knowledge. It was, he had no doubt, a data crystal of some kind.

"Well, my young friend, I do not believe this is a very safe place for us any more. We had better leave as soon as possible."

"Lalabababaaa!" the boy said, grinning as he reached for Ben's beard.

"Indeed," Obi-Wan agreed.

It did not take long for Obi-Wan to gather his things, since he had few things to gather. What he did have, however, was money. Just after the purge, while on Bail Organa's ship, Obi-Wan transferred credits from the various Jedi temple accounts shortly before Palpatine's agents froze all Temple assets. It had taken almost a month to safely route the funds from one hidden account to the other, until he had finally been able to get a credit disk transferred to Chantori, where he picked it up personally before coming back to the desert world that served as his home for the past four years.

Now that disk would be his only hope of escape from agents he knew would be arriving shortly. Though the emperor had not found the boy, Obi-Wan knew he would not stop looking.

~~Legacy~~

~~Legacy~~

Three days later, a lone figure strode through the abandoned complex of the Lars farmstead. A line of Imperial stormtroopers, many of them clones from the wars just four years past, stood at perfect attention. The shuttle gleamed with the light of the setting suns.

The figure did not speak as he moved through the buildings, through each room. Black gloved hands touched walls and cabinetry as if he could still feel anything. The stone and adobe walls absorbed the sound of his mechanical breathing, maintaining the silence of the place. The figure noticed the booster chair left in the seat. He noticed the emptied stores. He noticed the little boy's bedroom filled with toys, many of which appeared old and second-hand. He stood for an especially long time in the doorway to that room, staring at the room as if he recognized or saw something no one else could see. The only sound was the uhhh-burrr of a respirator.

Finally, the black armored creature, the cyborg monstrosity known as Darth Vader, turned and left the house, walking ponderously up the steps from the sunken courtyard. He strode across the rock and sand until he came to the graves. He found five of them, one of which he himself had dug a lifetime ago. He ignored the newer marker for Cliegg Lars and instead stared at the marker for Shmi Skywalker with the same silence with which he had walked through the home.

Then his mask turned toward the new mounds, and the words burned into the simple stone markers. He read the first two with interest.

Here Lies Owen Lars, Beloved Husband

Here Lies Beru Lars, Beloved Wife.

Then his hidden eyes fell on the third marker, larger to accommodate the longer message.

Here lies Luke Skywalker, age four,

son of Senator Padme Amidala

and Anakin Skywalker, Jedi Knight,

and the greatest hope for the Light.

With his death, so too dies our hope for a better tomorrow,

and the last legacy of all that was good in his father.

The stormtroopers watched with interest as their master, the Dark Lord of the Sith and apprentice to the new Emperor himself, knelt in the sand with a sound that even through the vocorder of his mask sounded like a groan of unbearable agony.

A trooper rushed forward. "M'lord, are you injured?"

Vader rose, and with a terrifying roar slammed his fist into the chest of the trooper. The blow, strengthened by rage, the Force, and cybernetics, sent the already dead man's body flailing through the air to crash into sand meters away. The other troopers remained passive and at attention.

Darth Vader marched to the shuttle and the troopers mutely fell in behind him, leaving the fallen trooper where he lay.

An hour later, an Imperial class star destroyer opened up with all turbolaser batteries on the surface of the planet. With only a single ship, it took almost three hours, but by the time Darth Vader left Tattooine, the entire surface of the planet had been slagged into glass, along with all those who lived and died there.