After Math

Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/53180017.

Rating: General Audiences

Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Category: Gen
Fandoms: Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars - All Media Types
Relationship: Leia Organa & Luke Skywalker
Characters: Luke Skywalker, Leia Organa
Additional Tags: Ezra Ahsoka and Cal are all mentioned but do not actually appear, Post-
Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, New Jedi Order (Star Wars), Jedi Luke
Skywalker, Leia Organa Needs a Hug, Teaching, Brother-Sister
Relationships, Fluff, Introspection
Language: English
Stats: Published: 2024-01-20 Words: 2,137 Chapters: 1/1
 After Math
by SpellCleaver

Summary

Leia visits Luke, Cal, Ahsoka and Ezra's new Jedi school. She and Luke talk about a pretty
crucial issue: teaching.

Notes

I've had this title and general concept knocking around in my brain for over a year now (okay,
I had the pun knocking around for a year now). But then I was scrolling through tumblr and
this post from stealingpotatoes's The Last (4) Jedi AU grabbed me by the throat.

If you don't want to click through, here's the relevant concept:

the new jedi order is at a disadvantage bc it's made up of 3 ppl who dropped out of school
ages 17 (whose education got shitted by war), 12-13, and 7 respectively and only one guy
who actually finished school -- and he went to school on Tatooine of all places. I imagine a
visiting Leia, who had the best tutors/went to the fanciest schools on Alderaan, is probably
the one to be like hey this is a school you guys-- are you guys teaching them like, stuff that
isn't weird force techniques and immediate survival skills?? please say they know maths and
literature outside of jedi texts?? which probably devolves into "Cal Ahsoka and Ezra have to
sit there while Leia tries to teach them basic high school classes"

Anyway. It was meant to be funny. But I've been thinking a lot about Leia growing up on
Alderaan by herself recently, and also just finished the audiobook of The House in the
Cerulean Sea by T. J. Klune, and suddenly there were 2,000 words of it and a lot of emotions.

Hope you enjoy, Potes! <3

“How are the mathematics lessons going?” Leia asked pointedly, gaze sliding towards the
school building. She’d come to visit them at the Jedi school during a brief recess from the
Senate, which Luke appreciated. Luke also knew, however, that she was keeping a close eye
on what exactly they were doing.

“Well,” he hummed, pointedly steering her so the main building was out of her eyeline.
When he’d asked her to go for a walk in the gardens with him while the children were
engrossed in their lessons, he hadn’t intended for it to be an interrogation. The gardens were
designed to be a peaceful place for Jedi to meditate, after all.

But he should have known better. With Leia, everything was an interrogation.

She allowed him to move them so a copse of tree hid the old stone building from sight, then
raised her eyebrows. “Well as in they’re going well, or well as in you’re stalling to think of
something to say?”

“Well,” he repeated. Before she could snort, he continued: “Rey’s taking to them particularly
well. She’s a talented mechanic and pilot. Not that I’ve been letting her fly any ships”—he
added hurriedly when Leia’s face thundered—“but she’s got the head for it. Physics. Maths.
All that.”

“I can believe that,” Leia said, a smile playing around her lips. “She’s a smart kid.”

“And Alanna is a really good teacher. Aaren especially likes being able to speak Alderaanian
with her. Zheff loves her as well—even Sayuri likes her, though I doubt she’d admit it.
Thanks for sending her here.” And paying her, went unspoken. The Jedi had… limited funds.
But Leia had been offended enough by the four Jedi’s lack of general educational knowledge
that she’d contacted all her old tutors (at least, the ones that were still alive, after Alderaan) to
see if they’d be interested in tutoring even more kids who were precocious, hyper, and
uncanny.

Luke had been given a clean bill of education by Alanna, who’d watched him complete a
standardised test, grumbled about unorthodox but efficient methods, and told him to get out
of her classroom before he taught anyone else the garbled maths he’d learned on Tatooine.
But he had really appreciated sitting in on some of the literature and culture lessons that
Linus, a Toydarian who’d worked as a tutor on Coruscant for decades, had given them. On
Tatooine, he’d learnt Huttese and Basic. He’d done some reading of novels and about other
cultures, and he was pretty quick at picking up languages after being surrounded by the
hodgepodge of cultures and species that had flocked to the Rebellion, but nothing so in-
depth. And it was nice to be taught something for once, instead of being given cryptic
nonsense and having to figure it out himself.

He imagined his students felt the same way, sometimes. Luke, Ezra, Cal, and Ahsoka, even
with their jumbled and varied approaches to teaching were hardly more forthright than Ben or
Yoda had been. At least Alanna and Linus explained things to them.

“Alanna is fantastic,” Leia agreed. “A lot better than you.”

Luke rolled his eyes. “You were my first student, in my defence. And you fought me all the
way.”

“You think I didn’t fight Alanna as well?” Luke thought about himself at twelve-years-old,
imagined that in Leia, and shuddered on Alanna’s behalf. “I’m glad Rey’s doing well.
Though I wasn’t asking about her.”

Luke raised his eyebrow. “If you’re asking about Grogu, I assume he’s doing fine. He’s not
on the same level of maths as Rey yet, for obvious reasons, but—”

“I’m asking about Ezra,” Leia said.

Luke blinked. Then he himself looked back at the school, hidden behind the trees, then back
at Leia. The atmosphere in the peaceful meditation garden tensed slightly. He took some deep
breaths and turned to address it.

“Why ask me?” Luke said quietly. “Why not ask him yourself once he’s out of lessons?”

Ezra and Cal did sit in the back of Alanna’s maths lessons to the younglings, the same way
Luke sat in the back of Linus’s lessons. They told the younglings it was in case they needed
any questions answered; they reassured the younglings’ parents it was so, in the case of any
Force-sensitive tantrums, they were there to assist and ensure no one got hurt. Alanna and
Linus may have taught young Leia and thus be accustomed to the oddities of a repressed
Force-sensitive child, but they had no experience with what one could do once even partially
trained.

The parents, who by the time of sending their children to the school, were very familiar with
the constant threat of younglings getting overwhelmed, by their emotions or by the Force. It
reassured them that a trained Jedi was on hand to help. Luke, Cal, Ezra, and Ahsoka kept
quiet exactly how much training each of them had received. Leia had recommended they
keep their shoddy standard education a secret, too.

War, death, homelessness, and general Tatooinian incompetence had disrupted them all on
that front. It was a small thing that hadn’t seemed to matter in the Rebellion, when they were
all running for their lives. But the aftermath was different. When Leia had commed Luke to
yell at him about them accidentally committing fraud for the fifth time because it was Ezra’s
turn to look after the finances, it had suddenly been a gargantuan issue.

They were meant to be teachers. But with the exception of Jedi skills, neither of them had
had the chance to learn much from their own teachers in a very long time.

“We’re not that close,” Leia reminded Luke.

“You worry a lot about him for people who aren’t close.”

She snorted. “I met him once. During the war. I was on a Rebel mission and the Ghosts were
the cell we were delivering supplies to.”
Luke knew that. Ezra had explained after Leia had first visited the school, and the two had
shared a sudden, gleeful hug before collapsing back into the virtual strangers they were. But
Leia was clearly going somewhere with this.

“He was so young,” Leia continued. Her jaw twitched. Her gaze was fixed on the fountain in
the corner of the garden, whose relaxing babbling Luke was eternally grateful for, but it was
also far, far away. “We both were, obviously. But I had all these resources. I had all these
tutors. Food on the table. The chance to make a difference in the Senate, even if I was only an
Apprentice Legislator. Both of us were sixteen and willing to fight the Empire with
everything we had. I had an army.” Leia’s eyes were glistening. She blinked them until they
were just brown again, deep and dense. “Ezra had a stick.”

“That’s no way to refer to a lightsaber,” Luke said.

Leia elbowed him in the ribs, but she had to break the tension with a wet, unintentional laugh.
“You know what I mean. I’d seen a lot of young people in my fight. Especially in my charity
missions. Ezra wasn’t the most deprived. He had a family and people who cared for him. And
he wasn’t even the only other person my age fighting back.”

Luke waited. Leia cleared her throat. “But he connected with me. Even if he was annoying.
Sixteen-year-old boys usually are.” Luke nodded in agreement at that; she elbowed him
again. “I bet you were insufferable.”

“I was.”

“I wish I’d been there to see it,” Leia said suddenly. “Luke, it was lonely growing up an only
child on Alderaan. I always knew you were missing. I wasn’t meant to be alone. And when I
met Ezra, even if he wasn’t you… I cared about him instantly. It made me think about the
difference between him and me, and just how lucky I was. I worried about him. I used to
follow reports of the Ghost crew to make sure he was still alive.”

“Why not tell him that?” Luke asked. Not that he didn’t know why, but it had to be breached.
“Or, if not tell him that, then talk to him more. Try to build a connection beyond that feeling.”

“I still worry about him,” Leia continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “The exact way I worry
about you.”

Luke raised his hands to comfort her, then paused and lowered them again. “About me?”

“Alanna says your mathematics skills aren’t exactly up to par either.”

That had stung when Alanna had first told him, but Luke had reconciled himself to that now.
He shrugged. “They’re not subpar.”

“Did it ever affect you?” Leia asked. “In the Rebellion. Before now. Was there this
disadvantage you had the whole time that I didn’t know about?”

Luke shrugged. “I was always the green one in the Rebellion.” He lit his lightsaber and spun
it in a green circle to illustrate the point. Again, against her will, Leia laughed. “It wasn’t
unusual for me to feel on the back foot. I adapted. I learnt where I could. That’s what Ezra is
doing.”

“You’re all still suffering from the effects of the Empire,” Leia said.

“I’m pretty sure the Tatooinian education system wasn’t stellar even before the Empire.”

“Even after all these years, we’re still in the aftermath. We’ll be dealing with this forever.”

“You’re the one rebuilding the Republic,” Luke said gently. You’re the one who lost
everything, he didn’t say. “You know this.”

“Every day, I know it more,” she agreed. She passed a hand in front of her face. “That’s why
I keep fighting for this school, you know. Even though you’re all idiots and accidental tax
evaders. Even though my own feelings about the Force…”

“I know,” Luke said, freeing her from having to finish the sentence.

“You are the chance to heal some of these holes the Empire tore in the galaxy. You are
healing some of them. But every day, I find more places the Empire hurt people. And I don’t
know if we can ever heal everyone.”

Luke put his arm around Leia and sat them both down at the nearest bench. It looked over at
the garden beyond, but Luke didn’t take his eyes off his sister’s face. “You’ve been spending
too much time with politicians,” he said.

“I am a politician.”

“Exactly.”

She put her hands on her knees. “You say this all so lightly.” Her tone was low and
controlled. Not angry, she was but certainly frustrated with him. “I know you take this as
seriously as I do.”

“That’s why I’m saying all this so lightly,” Luke countered. “What good will it do the
younglings if I let them know exactly how dire the situation is? I’ll naturally be open with
them where necessary, but they’ve already known enough war. We’re trying to teach them
peace.”

“How can you teach that, Luke?” she burst out. “You’ve never been taught.”

“You’ve never built a republic before,” he said. “But neither of us are doing too badly.”

She leaned her head into his shoulder. “I’ve had more politics lessons than I can count. Ezra
can’t do basic algebra.”

“He can.”

She sat up again, turning to him. “What?”

“I realise I didn’t actually answer your initial question,” he said. “If you were asking about
Ezra. He does the homework with the younglings. He’s learning. He’s onto more advanced
algebra now.”

“Oh.”

Luke’s arm tightened around her shoulders. “We’re all learning, Leia. The Empire took a lot.
But it’s not too late for any of us.”

“You should have been with me, Luke,” she murmured. “On Alderaan. Why didn’t they take
you as well?”

Luke didn’t have anything to say to that. Ezra could learn maths. Leia could work in a
Republic. But the twins would never get back the childhood they should have spent together.

“We’re together now,” was all he could say.

A flurry of voices had them both turning their heads. With a bang, they heard the door to the
school swing open. Young, chattering laughter floated up on the wind and into the sunlit sky.

Break time.

“That’s mathematics class finished,” Luke said. “You should talk to Ezra. I’ll be in Linus’s
class in twenty minutes, but he’ll be free.”

“Have you learnt Toydarian yet?” Leia asked in Toydarian.

“I have no idea what you just said,” Luke responded in the same language. He hoped his
accent was alright. “I don’t know a single word.”

Leia laughed. Luke stood up and offered her his hand. She took it, then when she was on her
feet she kissed his cheek again.

“The younglings love you,” she said. “I was talking to Alela. She thinks you make the galaxy
go around.”

“She’ll learn differently one day,” Luke replied. “Younglings always do.”
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