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When the suns set on Tatooine they melted side by side for a while before they split and one raced ahead to be done with the day before the other. The skies turned from gold to orange before the flooded red before the last pink faded with the dusk, Luke watched the pink kiss one last goodbye to the desert dust before it was done for the day. Before the suns left the sky and the world was once again in darkness.
When Luke was younger he used to spin round in circles around the dusty crops on the moisture farm. He’d throw his arms up on either side and run around across the dust and the dirt, whirling his arms around and around as his feet threw up baby dust clouds with every thudding step. If Uncle Owen didn’t catch him he’d pretend to be an X-Wing instead of just any other pilot. He’d make pew-pew noises as he ran with his arms spread wide, running free while playing at war. He wasn’t allowed to play at war. Uncle Owen didn’t like it when he did so. He always said that little boys shouldn’t be so eager to run off and fight when there was work to be done at home. He didn’t like when Luke inevitably got into a real pilot’s seat and started flying for the first time.
It was Biggs that did it. It was always Biggs. When Luke was a little boy running and kicking up the dust it was always with Biggs at his tail. They’d call to each other as they went, arms rotating this way and that way as they circled each other. Trails of dust clouds would spurt up from where their feet were pounding down as they ran with their imagination and the minds of children at play. They’d laugh back and forth as they went for this was their child’s play and the real life implications of war and not yet tainted their imaginative heaven. When they were little it was only a game.
Over time it stopped being a game that they played within earshot of anyone. To an extent it was still their game but they did not advertise to the world that they were playing such childish games when they were old enough to understand what they were playing. They still did it when they couldn’t fly anything real yet. It was still their game, it was just more serious now than it could have been when innocence clouded their minds.
The sun set down over a moisture farm, years later, and Luke stood and watched it. The air was always too cool to be out watching the suns but he wanted to watch them melt away from the sky. He had always like doing this, regardless of what else was real in the world. No matter what problems he had during the day, during his whole life, the suns always set down in the same way. They always painted their pastels on the Tatooine sky as he watched them.
On another day the moisture farm would be painted the same colour as the suns melted at the right moment. It would be the bright red that blazed against the backdrop before it all melted away. On another day, that one day Luke would look back on and forget that he had indulged in one last sunset before it had all burned, the moisture farm would be burning away, mocking the sunsets and forcing reality to cut into the haven of youth that Luke was used to.
They never had official call signs. They didn’t know enough to think to use them. They made up nicknames and changed them regularly and used those when they pretended to be X-Wing pilots as they played on a moisture farm in the desert. They were young and they did not know the technical aspects of what they were doing.
“Skywalker to Darklighter, I’m coming in,” he’d say, arms stretched out through to his fingers.
“Darklighter to Skyboy, I’m right behind you,” he’d replied and they’d form diving noises as they sped up and charged at the central power station, arms abruptly turning to the side as they swooped past it and ran off towards the space again.
“Pew-pew-pew,” they’d call, and it was okay. It was a game.
“Right behind you, man,” they’d say as they chased each other, always on the same side as they flew through the farm. They were always together on the same front.
Over time they got to a point where it was too much to throw their arms up and make fake noises, because it was not enough. They were too old for childish games and they felt that they were old enough now for bigger things.
So they took scrap and found wreckage and Luke got it to work again and Biggs would jump in first and fly off with a whoop and a holler and it worked and it flew and he always came back for Luke. Luke was his co-pilot. Without Luke there was nothing to fly. There was nothing worth flying.
The suns were high in the sky when they had actual ships. When they flew side by side through crevices in mountains and round and round and round. This was the time for concentrating. They had real engines now and although they were in control it was a different control from when they were younger and the only fuel they had was how fast they could run.
They’d sit together after. Side by side with their helmets side by side as well. This was when Luke started to watch the sunsets. Biggs wanted to so they sat with their fingers splayed out next to each other.
They never acknowledged it. They never needed to. Without words it became a routine. They’d fix any issues and then fly around for a while. Side by side away from the farms and the life that they had in reality. Away from all that, to a place where it was just the two if them and nothing else fit in between except the words that did not need to be said.
They gravitated towards each other as they had done when they first met as children. They were not children now and they knew that even as they did something childish and stupid that was fuelled by freedom and imagination.
The suns melted down towards the desert as they melted towards each other.
It was slow, at first. Fingers splayed next to each other were splayed on top of each other, a couple of fingers overlapped and nothing more. They were too scared to move further than that in ways that they had not felt scared when they were flying.
They grew braver, as they did with everything. They had grown brazen in their play and expanded their territory. They had found and salvaged scrap and saved ships so they could be theirs and taught themselves how to fly them the way they wanted to.
Their fingers intertwined together as they sat side by side but they never mentioned it. It was just one of those things and it came to them as naturally as flying.
Gradually they shifted. They moved from side by side with a gap between them where their joined hands would rest until they were pressed up right by each other’s side and their hands moved from that space beside them to in front. Under the open sky with the pastels painting romantic tones behind them they acknowledged what they had never spoken about. They stared down at their hands like it was the first time they had seen them together and even though they knew that they were doing it they had never looked to see how perfectly their fingers fit together, side by side as they slotted together.
It was Biggs who kissed Luke’s hand. It was Luke who blushed and quickly responded by kissing the cheek of his friend. On that sunset that was as far as they went. It was enough because they were together. In any way that they were together it was enough.
Biggs wanted to go fly with the rebellion. He had something to believe in so he left to do just that. Luke wanted to be a pilot. He wanted to follow his friend. He had to stay and watch as his friend flew away without him, knowing that it would be so long before he could race to catch up with him. When they were little and still at play Biggs never ran off without Luke. Even if Luke had shorter legs and sometimes couldn’t run as fast as Biggs, he never fell behind. Biggs never let him.
Tatooine had twin suns but they didn’t set at the exact same time. One always set after the other.
They used to run with their arms stretched and their mouths open, a string of laughter bubbling up. The war wasn’t real to them.
When the war became real they became realistic too. They knew they had to fight and fly and serve a purpose. Biggs left to do so. Luke kept running around his moisture farm and speeding along on salvaged crafts.
Then he flew away and he caught up with Biggs.
The smiles on their faces in their youth was nothing compared to the smiles on each other’s faces when they were reunited, and not just briefly at a spaceport. When they were together, acknowledging that that’s what they were they were as happy and free as they had been as children, if only for a minute.
For the first time, and for the last, they were flying side by side with meaning and purpose. They were away from Tatooine, from the farms and the lives they had always wanted to fly away from. They had real X-Wings now. They had real call signs and real smiles, real worries and a real mission. This was the farthest from a game they had ever gotten. This was real life and it was not a thing of playtime anymore although they had been playing at it for years.
The years had not prepared them for the experience of actually flying together.
It was a fleeting dream now realised, and now taken away.
When they were younger they had ran as fast as they could with nothing to hold back their imagination.
They had never wanted to slow down.
They were flying as fast as they could, chasing and weaving, relying on themselves to fix their engines so they could go faster.
There was no point in slowing down when they could go faster.
Then came the change that was not a change.
It was slow and lazy and it was fast and furious and it was theirs. They were together and that was all that had ever mattered.
On the day before Luke’s life changed he watched the suns set on Tatooine for the last time. He saw one last red kiss placed on the horizon before it slipped away. It slipped away forever and he didn’t know it yet.
One sun had raced ahead to get that horizon first and although the other fell down next to it they never caught on. They were forever separated as they left the sky.
“Hurry up, Luke! Quick! Quick!”
Luke heard the words ringing in his head before he never reached his sun and Tatooine’s red star fell, never to rise again in a world not overshadowed by darkness that reached out and stole the innocence as they played by the moisture farm.