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It had been many years since they’d started this tradition.
He wasn’t sure when exactly these meet ups had begun, only knowing that at some point they had become something he couldn’t live without.
Sometimes he wondered if the old Masters would have something to say about his attachment to these moments, but they had been gone for many years now; rarely interrupting him anymore unless he was truly in need.
He was the Grand Master now; he was no longer the teenaged boy wonder with mystical abilities. Now he was in his seventies, greyer, slower, hopefully wiser.
He’d had a good life, all being said. He had his friends and his family by him the whole way. He’d been raised by an aunt and uncle who’d loved him and protected him. Their deaths had always been a bitter sting to him, and when the war had finished he had returned to Tatooine to make sure their bodies were given the burial they deserved. He had grieved them, and had not fallen.
His sister, who he’d been with for so long now it was hard to believe he’d ever lived without her, had retired from the political high-life, and come here to spend her old age relaxing and not shouting at some senator or other who dared cross her. Her beautiful children had come to his Temple, had learnt what he had to teach before choosing their own paths. He didn’t begrudge that not all of them had taken the trials to become Jedi. That was their choice, and only the Force could guide them.
His friends were aging with him, but when they were together it felt like they were eternally young. Young and brave and stupid and yet still so fiercely loyal to each other. They’d fought and won and lost and cried together. They’d loved each other, watched each other fall in love. Been there for marriages and divorces and births and deaths.
The first death had hit them all hard, even though they’d known it would have to happen someday. Wedge was older than many of them during the war, and old injuries came back to haunt him as he ticked over from his youth into old age. When he had gone, passed on into the Force, they had cried, and then they had celebrated the life of the man who’d piloted X-Wings like a madman and had gone on to teach the next generation how to fly.
They were all so old now, gold, brown, and black hair now faded into silvers and whites. Han had insisted his had remained its youthful glow right up until one day he’d had no choice but to admit his hair was now silver. Leia had laughed at him as he’d sulked over it, calling him a charming old fox, reminding him that if she’d loved him when he’d been insufferable, she could love him even now he was old and grey.
Leia had only aged with the grace bestowed on her alongside her beauty. Any who saw her knew that in her prime she had been incredible in every way. She could still command armies like the princess she was, hair braided and piled and arranged in any matter of complicated styles. Even as he grew old beside her, he couldn’t help but still think her as radiant as the day they’d met. He loved his sister; was glad they’d found each other. Without her, he knew his life would have taken a different path.
The path he had taken had not been an easy one, not really. Setting up an entire religious Order based on only a tiny amount of learning, combined with desperate research to understand more always more had been a difficult task. When he’d eventually managed to find some semblance of sense, still so young, still barely thirty, he had found his first student.
Despite the time between this moment and then, he didn’t think he would ever forget the call that came through the Force. A plea, a cry, for someone to hear, anyone to hear. He’d never heard anything like it before. When he had finally tracked it down to an Imperial Cruiser – and hadn’t that been a horrible surprise, that the Empire lived on in pockets and nightmares – he had not expected to find Grogu, but there he had been, with his father.
He’d expected to find a student, what he hadn’t expected was what he had found with it. He hadn’t expected a desperate parent, or a goodbye that echoed one he’d had only a few years prior. He hadn’t expected all that would come from recognising he couldn’t let this happen again, couldn’t split up families like his predecessors had.
And so, he’d asked Grogu’s father to come with them.
He had.
They’d started off as strangers, navigating this new and confusing world of coparenting a child. Arguing over who had the right to teach what, over one wanting to form a bond and the other worried he’d lose his forever if he didn’t hold on tight. They’d been wary of each other, had used careful words and placating hands as they negotiated this new life they’d found themselves in.
They’d become friends, tentatively forging the bonds of friendship over late nights and lesson plans. Swapping stories over tea and cakes had become a nightly ritual as they dealt with life with a fifty-year old toddler who could lift mudhorns but couldn’t use a fork.
They’d become closer than friends, almost as close as family, when they had talked of their pasts and their troubles. When one had stayed to be a Grand Master and the other had left to become a King, each reunion had felt sweeter for it finally letting them be in each other’s orbit once more. They had grown close because they wanted to, not because of another pulling them together. They chose to be themselves, to trust, to just be, when in the other’s company.
Luke had fallen in love with Din somewhere around the fifth year of Grogu’s tutelage, a slowly creeping sensation of loss each time he saw the other man leave them. He’d known that this love was not something he could act on, not while Mandalore was being reclaimed, not while the Clans were returning home, not while it was raining, not while it was winter, not when he wore those socks, or when they sat outside and gazed at the stars together.
He had said nothing, for almost forty years he had loved in silence, not rising to Leia’s or Han’s teasing, or to Lando’s overtures. He had remained steadfast, loving from afar, loving without possession. It had never been the right time.
He was wondering now if it would ever be.
He’d not said anything when the Temple was attacked by Imperial Remnants, and the Mandalorians had come to their rescue. He’d not said anything when the Mand’alor had granted them a new Temple complex on Mandalore. He’d not said anything when he’d cried in Din’s arms with gratitude and with fear.
He’d never said a word.
Sometimes, he thought he didn’t need to, that the casual brushes against each other, or the moonlit conversations, or the quiet spaces between deep friendship would be enough, and that the words he’d never said didn’t need to be spoken.
Other times, when someone challenged for a proposal and lost, or when someone made an overture, or attempted to invite themselves into the Mand’alor’s bed, he’d wondered if this would be the night he said the words he’d held so close for so long.
It was on nights like this, when Concordia shone in the distance and the galaxy lit up the night sky that he questioned why he was waiting. They weren’t getting any younger, time wasn’t going to slow down for them just because he was in love. Time was a cruel mistress, and she had never slowed for love before, and she never would. It was not in her nature to be so kind. Her kindness came in the form of having those moments in the first place, in giving the gift of memory even when the seconds ticked by too fast, so that love lived eternally in a fraction of existence that had been and gone.
On nights like these, he looked at the man next to him and wondered, ‘what if I had?’. What if he hadn’t been too scared, or too busy, or too in love to say what he’d known for so long it had calcified into his aging bones. If he had just filled the space between them with a truth so pure he ached with it.
Instead, he’d stayed silent, and had just wondered.
As Time had moved on in her endless way, Din’s adherence to the Creed had shifted. He no longer devoutly wore the helmet for all but Clan; he allowed his closest to see him as he was. He’d only grown more handsome in Luke’s eyes, age suited him. Brown curls had turned as silver as his armour, had remained as fluffy and as full as they had been all those years ago when Grogu had thrown him into a lake using the Force.
His eyes, though, they had not changed. They were still as sweet and as soulful as the day he’d first seen them, even though at that time he hadn’t known that he was never meant to see. The first time Din had willingly looked at him without the helmet, his heart had sung with the knowledge that those eyes that echoed in his memory were indeed real, that he could have them focused on him, that he didn’t have to rely on an ill-won, unwanted fragment of time that he was never meant to see.
As they’d aged, he’d started leaving more and more of the armour behind. No one begrudged him that when everyone knew how he’d spent nights asleep over complications and legalities in his office, how too many times being battered around meant that his knees and hips and shoulders struggled to keep the beskar up as he passed sixty-five, then seventy, then more and more.
He was seventy-six now, Luke knew, and Din was always surprised that he’d lived as long as he had.
He’d once confided to Luke, one night when the children were all asleep with their visiting parents, that he’d fully expected to die soon after leaving Grogu, before Luke had invited him along. He had been prepared to lose the Darksaber and then continue living as he had, until the apathy and loneliness of a life without the Child caused him to make a fatal mistake.
He didn’t want to die, but the despair of being alone, and never seeing his son again had made him less than perfect with his ideas of self-preservation.
They’d sparred many times, had each other’s backs countless times, had protected each other more times than Luke could count, but Din always said it was that first meeting where Luke had truly saved his life.
He’d waited too long to do this, even though he didn’t remember when they’d started their tradition of meeting on the Temple roof to enjoy each other’s company and to watch the stars they no longer roamed; he knew it had been too long for today to be the day that he finally told the truth. The secret he’d held for so long was burning to be said, lest it never taste the moonlight for itself.
“Din?”, it almost came out as a whisper, as if breaking the sacred silence of these beloved nights might be a step too far.
“Yes, Luke?”, came back the answer. Even without the vocoder and with so many years added on, Din’s voice was still as deep and calm as it had been in their youths.
“Do you ever regret things? Like things you should have said?” Like saying the words that were now crowding behind his lips in a way they hadn’t done since he’d first thought them oh so long ago.
“I try not to. I know what I can and cannot change. And so I just learn to move on.”
“I think I’ve regretted something for years now.” And yes, now he thought about it, it was regret, regret that they’d potentially missed out on so many years together. That these happy years could have been happier if he’d just told Din how he felt.
“What do you regret, my old friend, that it affects you now?”
Was this the moment he’d been waiting for all these years? Was this the moment that time had given him to make his feelings known?
But he was a coward.
“It’s nothing, not enough to ruin this night.” He was ashamed of himself, but he couldn’t make himself do it. But Din could always surprise him, now as much as forty years ago.
“Actually, maybe there is one thing I regret...”
“There is?”
“Yes. I never told you I’ve been in love with you since you and Grogu splashed in puddles during that two-week storm on Yavin.”
Had he heard that correctly? Had Din truly just said-
“You’re in love with me?”
At this, his friend turned to him, eyes twinkling, age having removed any shame he might have felt at his admission.
“Yes. And I have been for many years. I thought you knew, and were just being nice, but then I realised you didn’t know, and I was too much of a coward to tell you.” His breath was fogging around his face. They wouldn’t be able to stay out much longer, not if they wanted all their joints to remain in working order and not painful icicles.
“Din. I’m in love with you. I have been for forty years. I’m so sorry-“
“Never be sorry. We had a good time regardless. You saved me, after all.”
Din reached to hold his hand, and Luke knotted their fingers together. They’d been so close to the truth this whole time. But neither had ever been brave enough to take the plunge. Was this the moment they’d been waiting for?
“Would it be ridiculous, not even five minutes after you told me you’re in love with me, to ask you to marry me?”
It was a ridiculous request, but Luke had spent so long not speaking his love that he wouldn’t stop now.
“Hmmm, no, I don’t think it is. I’d very much like to marry you. After all, we’ve been fulfilling the vows for years.”
“We have haven’t we?”
They’d not be able to do the ceremony here, not if they both wanted to survive into married life without the disappointed looks (Grogu) and snarky comments (Leia) they knew would come if they didn’t at least wait until the morning.
But there was something he could do now, and it seemed like Din had had the same idea, as they leaned in towards each other.
Bathed in starlight, as their lips finally met, Time gave them a gift, and the world around them slowed to a halt.