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He remembered being five and watching his friend explode from the inside out. They hadn’t been paying attention--too involved in the game of chase they had been playing. They had strayed over the line. The line that said if you are owned and you want to live don’t cross me. Krayln had wanted to live—he had been laughing, his face lit up with joy, and his eyes shining bright when it had happened. There had been no warning. No chance to correct an innocent mistake. Blood, bone, and viscera had splattered Luke’s hair, face, and clothes. The ringing in his ears was so loud that it hurt and the sun glared down at him as he blinked away the blood from his eyes. The horror dawning on his young face and pain seared its way through his heart. He looked at where his friend had been, looked at what was left, and there was nothing distinguishable left. He was just another slave whose chip had been activated. Just another life lost on the sands of Tatooine. Even at five years old death was something Luke Skywalker was familiar with. The blood on the sand and on him already drying and cracking as it was baked in the twin suns. He remembered stumbling his way back across the line, through town, and back to his aunt and uncle’s farm. He vaguely recalled the way people stopped, stared, and whispered as they saw him. It was not the first time they had seen someone drenched in the blood of another. On Tatooine you had three options: to be the killer, the killed, or the unfortunate witness. Luke with his blood matted hair, shock filled eyes, and trembling hands was easily identifiable as the latter. No one tried to stop him, comfort him, or talk to him. They let him pass like a ghost-silent and haunted.
His Aunt had taken one look at him and knew even as words tumbled from Luke’s lips: “I’m sorry” and “I didn’t mean too”. Words meant nothing. She had ushered him in and he noticed in his daze that she was crying. She’d carefully stripped him of the bloodied clothes and used their precious water to wipe his face. It was as she held him, rocking him, singing a lullaby in the language of slaves that his eyes dried and he made a promise to himself, to Krayln, to all those who lived in bondage, and to the lineage of his name that he was going to save as many as he could from those chips. He would help keep people from dying.
He was nine years old the first time he performed a chip removal surgery. He had watched his aunt do them for the majority of his life. They were a part of the network that freed slaves of their chips and worked to get them off planet. His hands had trembled until he breathed in, and exhaled. He had handed the girl a cloth which she’d stuffed into her mouth as she laid down in front of him. She was older than him and her master had just sold her to Jabba’s Caravan. The next morning would have seen her as a pleasure slave in Jabba’s palace. She had not seen another morning on Tatooine. He’d picked up the knife that the day before he had used to cut up his dinner. He’d placed the tip just below her chip scar; the scar laid directly below her collar bone on her right side. He had whispered an apology as he’d cut into her flesh. He vividly recalled that she never screamed instead she had smiled through clenched teeth as tears had pooled in and fell from her eyes.
His uncle had accompanied the girl to the drop off point under the cover of darkness. Luke would wonder about her for years: if she had made it, what she had done with her freedom, did she have regrets? He would never get those answers and he had never known her name. He had hoped though that life would be kind to her in her freedom. It was only years later that he finally understood that life had no concept of kindness.
He was thirteen when he’d finished building his skyhopper. He had found it in a junkyard and had labored over it for years with a single goal in mind. The changes he had made to it had allowed it run quieter and fly faster than it would have when brand new. He’d kept the colors non-descript…it had easily blended in during the heat of the day and camouflaged under the cover of darkness.
Once it was running the challenge became learning how to fly it in such a way that he would be able to do it in any situation. If his piloting skills were lacking in any way people would die and the network would be compromised. The stunts and courses he had run verged on suicidal but he ran them until he could do it with ease. He explored the terrain around his home for up to 50 miles in every direction. He learned the places to hide, avoid detection, the places where anyone who wasn’t used to flying those channels would die, and he learned where one could hide rations and much needed water. He had known that one day he would be ready he just had to keep practicing.
He was fifteen the first time he flew for the network and his family hadn’t a clue. He had picked up the package- a small waif of a boy, no more than seven, with wide haunted eyes. Fear and hope mixed together and together they caused the boy’s slight frame to shake with nervous energy. Luke hadn’t spoken and neither had the boy. The less they’d known about one another the better. Their actions would mean death for them both if they’d been caught. The mission though had went smoothly. He picked up, transported, and dropped off the package with no problems. As the boy had exited his hopper Luke had caught his eyes and wished him good luck.
Adrenaline had coursed through his veins the rest of the night even after he was safely tucked into his bed. His hands had trembled and his breath had come fast as he’d felt the odd need to cry. He hoped that little boy made it because the desert sands knew his journey was only beginning. The hardships he had faced on Tatooine only acting as preparation for life as a freedman out in the galaxy. He had felt a bolt of jealousy go through him at the thought of that little boy getting to escape that planet. The boy would get to see the stars and the planets that surrounded them; while Luke was stuck on a planet where lawlessness was the law and the rules could change like the sand dunes.
He’d been 18 when his aunt and uncle discovered he flew for the network. His aunt had shaken her head with resigned pride because of course a Skywalker would not be content to just perform the surgeries. His uncle, however, had raved in anger. Many years from that moment Luke would look back and think fear. His uncle had been so afraid and Luke would wonder if he had spent a single day not being afraid since his nephew had come into their lives. Owen had forbidden him from flying anymore missions and when he had refused his uncle had laid down an ultimatum. That had been a miscalculation. Luke had gathered a blanket form his bed, his pack which held rations, water, and his knife before he’d walked out of the only home he had ever known and got into his hopper before he had sped away. The voices of his aunt and uncle had faded in the wind and righteous anger had burned through his veins. In his anger he had forgotten how cold desert nights could be but he had made it and then he proceeded to make it through four more nights. During those days and nights he’d performed surgeries, transported packages, and never lost sight of why he was doing it in the first place.
When his uncle had found him, with the help of the resident hermit, he’d begged him to come home. Five nights without his nephew in the house had calmed the man’s temper and for the first time in Luke’s memory he had spoken of his stepmother, Luke’s grandmother. He talked about how she had been a slave for most of her life and how despite the cruelty of the world she had been kind and never felt as if the world owed her anything. Luke had known the story, he’d known what his last name meant, and his aunt and Tatooine’s children had made sure he never forgot his heritage. But it had been the first time Owen had ever spoken to him about it. Luke had went home with him and an understanding had been formed between them; that Luke would not stop transporting for the network and Owen would still worry and not support it. Luke was okay with that. He didn’t need his Uncle’s support. He knew that Owen viewed slavery the way only a free man could and while Luke was a freeborn son—he was the freeborn son of slaves whose last name was one of the few traditionally held slave names. His lineage was drenched in slavery, in the bondage of sentient beings, and the blood that inevitably runs when one is owned by another.
Years later he would finally answer someone why? Why had he helped? He would respond simply with his name, his rank, and his lineage. Not many would understand, some would act like they did but secretly still be confused, others would congratulate him on his bravery, but there was always one who understood. His father understood. They both bore the same name, the same desire to free slaves, to stop as many people as possible from dying early and untimely deaths.
So when asked why he would from then on respond the exact same way. My name is Luke Skywalker, I am a freeborn son of a freedman from a long line of slaves.