Chapter Text
It was not easy living on Tatooine. It was twice as hard if you were a moisture farmer, the only one in the vicinity. Add to that the absolutely terrible location of your house and you will get the life of Luke Skywalker, who considered himself one of the unluckiest people in the galaxy.
Well, perhaps except his twin sister, Leia Skywalker. Girls didn’t really have anything to do on Tatooine, like, anything at all. Mostly they became wives and mothers and sometimes helped their husbands with their work. Luke, for his part, could not imagine such a life for Leia. She deserved much more than that.
That evening was quite similar to every other evening on the boring planet. Leia was sat in an armchair, cross-legged, boots on the floor, reading a book. Books were a rarity, but Leia somehow got her hands on them, exchanging books for all kinds of droid parts that were useless for them. Luke, for his part, was sat on the floor, curved in a very uncomfortable position. He’d much rather sit on a sofa, but Uncle Owen had always told him “no droids on the sofa”. They had just bought a new droid from Tusken Raiders, these pesky little creatures, and it seemed that there was something wrong with it. The red R4 unit was constantly beeping in strange ways and absolutely refused to work.
“Leave it, Luke”, Leia groaned after another loud and unpleasant sound from the droid. “We’ll just buy a new one tomorrow”.
“No”, Luke snapped, sticking a finger into his mouth – the bloody thing had just stabbed him. “I bought it, and it’s mine. I can’t just leave the poor thing!”
Leia just shook her head. Luke’s obsession with droids bordered on the uncanny, he practically thought of them as living beings. Leia wondered sometimes if Luke got that from his father.
Well, neither of them really knew where they had come from. Leia and Luke Skywalker had been raised on Tatooine all their lives by their uncle and aunt, and however often Luke asked, they would say nothing about their father. Leia, for her part, was more interested in their mother, and once she managed to get it out of Aunt Beru that their mother had died when they were still babies.
Leia returned to her book, while Luke kept screwing something in and out, trying to fix the damned machine. The story she was reading fascinated her: these things she could only learn from old books. Leia was reading about the Force, the omnipresent power that gave life to all living things. The main character of the story was a Knight who used the Force to save a princess from a fearsome beast on planet Hoth. It was cold there, so the Knight took his princess to a warm cave and comforted her.
Of course, this was just a fairytale, but something told Leia that the Force really could exist. She’d heard tales of Force Users from her aunt when she was little, people who could use the Force to their advantage. She imagined them as terrifying, powerful men who knew no mercy. Luke, who listened to the same tales, would always speak of kind-hearted heroes who would save their princesses from dangers and of outer space filled with wonders of the Force.
“Damn it! R4, where are you going?!” Leia heard Luke shout, and then there was a loud bang. She looked up from her book and saw that the door was ajar and there was no sign of the droid in the room.
Leia quirked an eyebrow. “It’s run away from me”, Luke confirmed her thoughts and wiped sweat from his forehead with the sleeve of his white tunic. His face expressed anger, confusion and a little bit of sadness. “What am I doing wrong?” he pleaded.
“You aren’t doing anything wrong”, Leia sighed and got up from the armchair, ruffling Luke’s blonde hair affectionately. “The droid is just wrong, okay? It’s malfunctioning. Maybe it’s broken, you know the places the Tusken Raiders get their stuff.”
“But I can’t leave it!” Luke got up and started fumbling for his blaster. Leia shook her head, realising what her brother was going to do, and opened her mouth to protest. “No, Leia. I have to. It’s mine.”
Luke flashed his blue eyes at her, and Leia pursed her lips. He knew how this gaze affected her, but she just couldn’t let that happen. “Luke, it’s not safe out there”, she said firmly. “There are all kinds of creatures at night. And anyway, what will Uncle Owen say? Soon he will be turning off the energy. What if you aren’t back by then?”
“I’m sure it’s not got very far”, but Luke was already pulling on his boots. “I’ll be back before you know it.”
Luke wasn’t listening. He knew Leia meant well, but she just didn’t understand. The droid wasn’t even the entire reason Luke wanted out. He just needed this, the feeling of wind in his hair, the freedom of riding above endless planes covered with sand, imagining that he had no farm to take care of, that he wasn’t stuck on this garbage planet. Leia seemed content with the life she had, she somehow learnt to get the best out of it. But Luke couldn’t do the same thing.
Ignoring the glare Leia was giving him, he rushed out of the house and breathed in the chilly evening air. The suns were setting, and twilight descended onto the desert. Luke pulled his helmet on, jumped onto the speeder and secretly hoped that the droid had got pretty far. Outings like this one gave him the only taste of freedom he was likely to ever get.
Luke rode his speeder and whooped in joy. He almost closed his eyes, so good he felt. Nothing in the whole galaxy could compare to this. However, his joy would not last long – the droid had indeed not had time to get away too far. It was stumbling against some stones at the bottom of a huge cliff positioned behind enormous dunes. How the droid had even got there, was a mystery.
“R4!” Luke called out, stopping his speeder and leaving it to hover in the air. He took off his helmet and jumped into the sand which ended up covering his legs up to his knees. “Get back here!”
The droid just kept bumping against the rock and did not react at all.
“R4!” Luke shook his head and started moving towards the rocks, which proved to be extremely difficult. The dunes were just getting deeper and deeper, and Luke could barely see where he was going due to strong gusts of wind. “Come on”, he hissed, after one of his legs got stuck in some unknown object deep inside. “Don’t pretend you are deaf, R4!”
Perhaps Leia was right, and there really was no hope for the droid? But no, Luke decided, it was just a bit wrong. Nothing a good mechanic couldn’t fix. And Luke was a very good mechanic, everyone admitted that. Perhaps one day he’d even make his own droids.
Suddenly someone’s hand landed onto Luke’s shoulder, and he blanched, falling into the sand. He lifted his head up and saw a horrifying beast with a long trunk and thick, calloused skin. It was another Tatooine native, one that Luke didn’t know the name for. He didn’t know what it ate either, but judging by the open mouth right now it was pretty happy to eat him.
Luke screamed and fumbled for his blaster. The creature wasted no time in picking him up by the scruff and lifting him up to look into the eyes of its dinner. With shaking hands, Luke fired a couple lasers into the creature’s neck and chest, but the calloused skin wasn’t even scratched.
Luke swinged one of his legs into its stomach, and the monster bellowed, releasing the now dirty and ripped tunic. Luke fell down into the sand again and started crawling away before the monster regained strength. However, crawling in sand proved to be nigh-on impossible, and Luke attempted to stand up and make a beeline for the speeder, the malfunctioning droid forgotten.
Darkness descended onto Tatooine as the final rays of the suns disappeared below the horizon. Luke took a few steps backwards, horrified – the monster’s eyes flashed red in the night and it began half running, half jumping across the sand towards Luke. It was unbelievably fast, there was no way a human could outrun it. If Luke could just make it to the speeder…
All too soon the creature reached him. It hopped almost on top of Luke, and he fired aimlessly again. This time the blast hit the monster in the eye, and Luke saw his chance. Concentrating, he sent another laser into the other eye, but missed by just a bit, and that was his fatal mistake. The monster waved one of its paws, aiming the thrust at Luke’s right palm, forcing him to let go of his only weapon. Feeling that the blaster was gone from his hand, Luke closed his eyes, almost ready to accept his death. He silently apologised to Leia, to his aunt and uncle, that he’d never see them again…
When suddenly the horribly smelling body of fat disappeared, and Luke was being pulled up, higher and higher… He realised that there was no soil beneath his feet and opened his eyes, terrified. His legs were dangling in the air far up above the ground, the speeder gone, and he was being carried somewhere in the general direction of the nearest town.
“What are you doing, wandering around Tatooine after sundown?!” a voice snapped, and Luke just realised his hands were being tightly held by a stranger. He turned his head a bit upwards and saw that the person carrying him was a man, much taller than him, with honey-coloured hair and cat-like golden eyes that almost glowed in the darkness of the Tatooine night. “It’s dangerous out here.”
“My home is the other way”, Luke said lamely, gesturing with his head in the opposite direction. “I went after my droid.”
The man smiled, almost imperceptibly, and turned them around. “Be careful next time, I might not be around. Now hold on tight and move your legs, all right?”
Luke frowned, and the man hurried to explain, “Just move them like you would if you were walking.” He grabbed Luke’s hands a bit tighter, and that gave him a strange sense of security. The man was oddly familiar and comforting, even though Luke was sure he’d never seen him before. He shifted uncomfortably and began to walk, trying very hard not to think that he was extremely far up in the air in the company of a man who could very well be dangerous.
“How do I know you’ll get me down safely?” Luke inquired, raising an eyebrow once he got comfortable walking step in step with his saviour. “Do you even know where you’re carrying me?”
“Home”, came the nonchalant reply. “You said you lived somewhere in that direction.”
The man clearly did not want to answer the question, but Luke really had no choice but to trust him. After all, the only other option was to jump right into the sand and hope for the best.
“Scared?” The man asked with a small, charming smile, and Luke felt his cheeks heat up. Why, he clearly experiences this every day, why would he be scared… “Don’t worry, I’m holding you tight.”
“That’s the least of my problems right now”, Luke grumbled. “R4 is still somewhere near that goddamned cliff, my speeder and my helmet are forgotten among the sand and my only weapon is lost. And I will get home after sundown. What will Uncle Owen say?”
“Do not tell me it’s all my fault”, the man sounded amused. “I didn’t tell you to go after that droid.”
“You don’t have to sound so self-assured, you know”, Luke unconsciously closed his fingers around the much bigger palms of his saviour. “But thanks anyway. Without you I’d be dead.”
The man just hummed and suddenly started his descent. Apparently they were already close to the house, and Luke hadn’t even noticed anything.
The man carefully put Luke down into the yard inside the house so that he could go straight to his room without passing the hallway where his undoubtedly angry uncle was waiting for him. And Leia… oh god, how was he going to look Leia in the eye? She’d warned him, hadn’t she, and he’d done the exact opposite again, just as always…
A big warm hand ruffled Luke’s hair, and he received a charming smile from this absolutely fantastic man. He’d saved him, he’d walked Luke on air, he’d got him home…
“I need to go, little one”, the man said and tucked a stray strand of hair behind Luke’s ear. “Take care, all right?”
And the next second he was gone.
Luke watched the man ascend into the sky and disappear like a fleeting image, a mirage in the desert. For a moment, it seemed to him that it had all been a dream: his fight with the monster, his strange saviour, him walking on air. But it wasn’t. Luke felt that his tunic had been ripped in various places where the creature had grabbed it. And there was Leia, running out the door and into the yard, taking his hands into hers, hugging him and shaking him by the shoulders.
“I told you, didn’t I!” she screamed at Luke and shoved him into the chest. “Look at you! You could have died!”
Leia pulled Luke inside and sat him down onto the sofa, examining him with shaking hands and looking for possible traumas. “I lied to Aunt and Uncle for you! Told them you were in bed already!” she hissed and hit him in the chest again. Luke whined and grabbed Leia’s wrists, trying to pry her hands off of himself.
Truth be told, he was extremely grateful but not exactly surprised. Leia and him had always been very close, and she would never hesitate in lying even to their aunt and uncle to cover up for him. Of course, that never saved Luke from Leia’s reprimands.
“I’m all right, Leia”, he sighed. “I’m alive.”
“I can see that”, she just shook her head and threw her chocolate-coloured hair back. “But that doesn’t mean you’re all right. Where have you been?!”
Luke took Leia’s hand in his and stroked it a little in an attempt to comfort her. Her brown eyes just looked at him sternly, but she did not object. Luke took a deep breath and recounted everything that had happened to him that night, omitting certain details from the description of his fight with the monster.
“The horrible thing might have eaten you”, Leia sounded even angrier than she had been when Luke had just come back. “That was exactly the sort of thing I was worried about. And I’m not just talking about the monster, Luke! Why did you trust that stranger?!”
Luke shook his head. Frankly speaking, he didn’t even know that himself. The man had just felt… like home. Safe. And Luke would always go with his gut, it hadn’t failed him before.
“Are you sure he wasn’t a Force User?” Leia continued, looking at Luke in disbelief. She could clearly see the small smile forming on his lips, and that promised no good. “He could have killed you!”
“He was so kind”, Luke replied finally, recalling the fascinating golden eyes of the man that had looked at him with such kindness. “He rescued me.”
“Don’t tell me he’s stolen your heart!” came a shocked and indignant cry from Leia. “Force Users aren’t all good people, the way you interpreted the stories! Had that been Vader, he’d have eaten it right up.”
Luke laced his fingers through Leia’s and grasped her hand a bit tighter. “He was good”, he said softly. “Trust me, Leia. I just know it.”
Leia sighed. She knew it was no good to argue with Luke when he trusted his intuition. Luke knew no facts and fact-based arguments when he felt something. Instead of continuing to shout she just took Luke’s free hand into hers and closed her eyes. “I’m just worried about you”, she mumbled. “What if your gut feeling makes a mistake and you get hurt?”
“It won’t. I promise.”
The next day Luke woke up early and went straight to the place he’d left his speeder and blaster, this time accompanied by Leia who’d stood in the doorway until he’d let her come along. They walked quite a long way since the only speeder they had was far away near the cliff and the droid. To be honest, Luke wasn’t at all surprised when he saw that the droid was gone. At least his speeder and blaster were intact.
Suddenly Leia grabbed Luke by the sleeve of the tunic and pulled him behind the cliff. Surprised, he gave a yelp, but a small, warm hand covered his mouth, and an arm snaked around him to keep him in place. Luke stared at the empty desert plane in front of him, confused, but then saw an enormous shadow in the distance. It looked a little like a spacecraft, but the thing was way too big to be one and it stuck out at weird angles. No one would possibly build a spaceship like that.
The shadow moved, pretty slowly, and it seemed like it was getting closer. Upon inspection though, Luke realised that it was moving diagonally and not really towards them. Well, that was a relief.
“What is that thing?” he mumbled against Leia’s palm.
“Don’t you see?” she hissed in his ear. “That’s the Destroyer from the legends! Vader’s lair!”
“Vader?!” Luke blanched. Vader was a name that he’d not heard for a long time. It had been going around when he and Leia were small children. They said Vader had once been a Jedi, a member of the Order of their own Alliance, one that Tatooine belonged to. But then he had grown power hungry and switched sides, he’d joined the enemy and become a Sith Lord.
“That war has already taken my son”, Luke heard suddenly and fell silent. War? “We’ve been fighting the Imperials for so long that I think we’ve forgotten why.” It was a woman speaking. Luke squinted and saw that two middle-aged women were walking in the sand towards the town. One of them, despite her not being elderly, looked old and unwell – the one who had said about her son.
“They are evil, Wanda”, the other replied. “We must restore what fleeting democracy we may have left. The Imperials will just squash it out.”
“Democracy?” Wanda laughed, but her laughter was husky and broken. “I don’t think you understand, Lilith. You think the Republic is democratic? No, it’s not. It’s all the same. The Chancellor is a monarch, he’s just hiding it better.”
“Chancellor Jinn is an honourable man!” Lilith argued. “He’d never commit such atrocities!”
“Oh, but he has”, Wanda said. “He has sent thousands of our people to die. My son among them, Lilith.” Then she closed her eyes and started walking a bit faster, leaving Lilith standing there, speechless, in the middle of the desert.
Luke was sitting at table with Leia, Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru. They ate in silence, none of them speaking, everyone lost in thought. Uncle Owen, no doubt, was thinking about how little water they’d gathered in the past week. Luke, for his part, couldn’t get the conversation of Wanda and Lilith out of his mind.
Well, he’d always known there were two opposing Alliances, the Imperials and the Republic. Luke had always thought of them as political, but the events of the last two days had shown him that perhaps they weren’t exactly. And Vader… wasn’t he a myth, a story to scare children? Did he really exist, then, the Jedi who had betrayed the Order and become a Sith Lord? Had his betrayal been the reason for the war? No, it can’t have been, that happened way too long ago… when Luke and Leia were so small they couldn’t even sit.
So why was the war still going? What was the reason? Why did so many people have to die in it? For example, Wanda’s son. And so many more women must have lost their husbands and sons…
Had Luke been Chancellor, he’d have tried to settle everything peacefully. But perhaps it was long past peaceful? Luke didn’t know. And he didn’t want to talk about it, Leia seemed shook enough because of what she’d heard. No doubt she was imagining a soldier Luke going to war and giving his life for an unknown cause.
“I’m glad we are farmers”, Leia said, catching Luke’s wrist on their way to their rooms, confirming Luke’s worst suspicions. Of course she was, Luke could see it in her eyes. He could see his own body, weak, unmoving and covered in blood.
They bid each other goodnight and retired to their rooms. Luke closed the door and leaned against it, sighing. He wasn’t sleepy, not really, but he wanted to be alone. Perhaps he could go to Leia’s room and ask her to lend him one of her books? Luke wasn’t as fond of reading, but he could do with a story about the Force. Maybe he would find an explanation as to how his saviour had walked on air…
The memory of the man still threw Luke into a daydreaming state. He was sure he’d remember that night until his death. That was quite the adventure… possibly the most exciting one Luke would ever have. And, if Luke was being entirely honest with himself, the handsome man was at least half the reason for his smile.
Well, when Luke finally lifted his eyes he knew that he wasn’t going anywhere. There was someone standing in his room, and that person was clearly unwelcome. It was a man whose face was covered with a dark crimson hood. He was tall and lean, and one of his hands was resting on the top of an obsidian cane. His whole appearance emitted power and arrogance, and he was more than a little intimidating.
“Sir?” Luke inquired. He searched for the door handle behind him, trying very hard to do it unnoticed. He found that his hands were trembling. “What are you doing in my room?”
The man took his hood off, and Luke saw quite a handsome face. He was perhaps in his fifties, but looked younger. He had greying hair, a small moustache and beard. His eyes flashed black, and Luke shivered slightly. Thoughts were racing in his head, and goosebumps covered his skin.
“What a distasteful room”, the man said, looking around with the expression of utmost disgust. “And what a distasteful owner.”
“Excuse me”, suddenly Luke found his voice. It was his property, god damn it! It was his room! The man was in his house and spoke about it in an unflattering way. How dare he? “I would very much like it if you were to leave.”
“You are telling me to leave, child?” the man laughed. It seemed that he was just having fun. His unbelievably condescending voice, his mannerisms like he owned the place sent a wave of fiery rage through Luke’s veins.
Luke growled and released the handle. It was his house and he was damn well going to defend it! “Yes, I am”, he insisted. “That is not your house. Leave.”
The sudden thought of ‘how the hell did he get here’ passed Luke’s mind, but he quickly discarded it. Now was not the time to think of it.
Suddenly the man took up speed and in a second he appeared right in front of Luke, pushing him up against the door. Luke grabbed at the fabric of the cape and tried to push the man away, but failed. He was much stronger than a nineteen-year-old young farmer. Luke scratched helplessly against the man’s chest and hissed through clenched teeth. The hair on his neck rose uncomfortably.
“Now listen to me, farmer boy”, the man growled. “You are nothing, understood? In no possible universe could you compare to me, Count Dooku, one of the greatest Sith Lords!”
Luke opened his mouth to protest and say that he was never going to compare to the man, but suddenly realised something. Dooku was a Sith Lord. He was a Force User. Oh no. Oh no… Now Luke was definitely freaking out.
But the most important question was… what would a Sith Lord want with Luke?
At that moment the room got very dark. Darkness covered every single corner, it got so thick that Luke couldn’t even see Dooku’s face. Before Luke could get properly frightened, pain erupted in his body, and he moaned, throwing his head against the door. It felt like his whole being was on fire. Actually, he wouldn’t be surprised if it was.
All too suddenly it ended. Dooku released him, and Luke collapsed onto the floor, trying to regain his senses. Everything still hurt, but it was more like the aftermath of pain, not pain itself. His limbs were shaking, his head was reeling, and it felt like there was a spiky something in his throat.
“You will not be able to speak of my curse”, Dooku announced. “Nor will you be able to take it off. Skywalker… such a pitiful little thing”, he withheld himself from spitting onto the floor and turned on the spot, disappearing from the room.
Luke felt fury rising in him. Pitiful little thing? He’ll show Dooku, he’ll find him and make him see… But if he was a pitiful little thing, why come to him, why tell him he could not compare to the Sith Lord? So there was something about Luke, wasn’t there! And Dooku knew it!
Luke attempted to scrape himself off of the floor, but it proved to be extremely difficult. It felt like his joints were made of molten oil and burnt every time he tried to move them. His hands felt weak, and Luke had to get down on all fours to spread the pressure.
At that moment his gaze fell on his hands, and Luke gasped in horror. They were wrinkled and terribly calloused, as if he were a ninety-year-old man.