Chapter Text
Ben Kenobi inhaled sharply, dropping the tool he was using to make somewhat questionable “enhancements” to his moisture vaporator at Teeka’s recommendation. It hit the stone floor of his hut with a clang that echoed the unnerving sensation reverberating through the Force. A single twitch, but one that sent a shrill, electric warning through Ben’s veins. He closed his eyes, summoning the Light Side, which settled around him with a calming flutter, but before he could search the Force for answers, the brief jolt had melted away without a trace, as if it never existed in the first place like a puff of fresh air dying upon the blistering desert.
Odd. His thoughts, as they so often did these days, drifted to the Lars’ and to young Luke. He couldn’t discern anything amiss in the Force other than the lingering anticipation that had slowly been billowing with each passing year. The boy, somehow almost a teenager now, was a beacon in the Force, one that was becoming more and more challenging to conceal. Ben wouldn’t be able to hide him forever - he already feared that Luke’s untrained presence would slip through the cracks and draw unwanted attention. He couldn’t allow that to happen. There were too many hungry eyes in the galaxy. Sickly yellow eyes. Eyes that had once been endless skies of bright blue.
Ben buried the thought before it swept him away to memories seeped in grief. The past was no place to dwell. He was beyond despair, had risen above the shock and grief upon learning that Darth Vader lived, though he wondered what kind of living an existence like that held.
Flashes of molten lava steaming like a freshly brewed pot of tea and the smell of burning, bubbling flesh battered his senses. Ben breathed in shakily, holding back bile that threatened to rise in his throat. The future glinted with promise, he reminded himself, shaking his head free from those thoughts. And until then he needed to protect Luke or else the boy would be devoured or destroyed, and the family slaughtered like animals.
He grit his teeth. He could do so much more for them if only he could train Luke. The Force gleamed like a supernova within him, but it was directionless, desperate for guidance. Perhaps it was time to try again with Owen. Last time he broached the subject, the moisture farmer’s face had turned a shade of red only rivaled by the deep scarlet of the suns at dusk. Asking for rain to fall was an easier task, but echoes of the recent disturbance rattled in his mind. The best way he could protect Luke was to teach Luke how to protect himself, shield his mind and presence. He had to try.
A familiar voice thrummed disapprovingly in his ear, and for a moment, Ben was a youngling at the Jedi Temple again, eager to try and staggering back to his feet when he failed. He huffed a short, troubled laugh. Those days were gone but the lessons remained.
Don’t try. Do.
He crouched down to pick up the vaporator tool, noting with a resigned groan at how his joints creaked and popped. Yes, he was growing old. The number of grey hairs on top of his head and in his beard nearly outnumbered the sunburnt copper ones, and he walked with a slight hitch in his step after a particularly nasty encounter with a band of Tusken Raiders who had threatened the Lars’ last harvest. Tatooine was a harsh planet that beat relentlessly upon its inhabitants, and Ben didn’t have the desert in his veins, not like Owen, Beru, and Luke. He wouldn’t be around forever, which was all the more reason he felt his patience thinning with each passing year.
Owen was as stubborn as an eopie, but he held a deeply rooted love for Luke, as if the boy were his own son. His fierce protectiveness stemmed from fear - of the past, present, and future all balled up into one great unknown, and Ben, though he still considered himself a Jedi, could not fault the couple for those emotions.
But he could negotiate with them.
He pursed his lips, the loose workings of a plan slowly taking shape. He would start with Beru. Though no less gritty or steadfast as her husband, she held a softer spot in her heart for the crazy old wizard living out in the Dune Sea. It would be far easier to plant the idea of training Luke in the Force in her head while Owen was away in Mos Eisley. Her love of the boy was wider than the Dune Sea. She’d have her skepticisms and qualms of course, but the very notion of Luke being in danger through something neither she nor Owen could never fully grasp would leave her unsettled. Beru had a sharp mind and compelling voice - if she believed in a cause, she was more than willing to make her husband see clearly.
Suns, Ben was willing to let them supervise at this point if Owen was worried. It was a far cry from his original plans to teach the boy advanced lightsaber combat and Force techniques when he fled into exile on Tatooine, but it was better than nothing. Shielding would ensure Luke’s safety. As he geared up his Eopie for the trek to the Lars’ homestead, he tried convincing himself that it would be enough to quell the nagging, doubting whispers that prickled in the Force.
***
Luke Skywalker twirled the slender stem between his fingers, both mesmerized by the flower’s stout beauty and afraid he would bruise it with his calloused hands. He was used to clutching tools and make-believe controls in a starfighter, not something he could crush in a single second if he accidentally wrapped his fingers too tight. Although the flower’s petals were thick and its stem pliable to protect it from both the desert heat and raging sandstorms, enabling it to blossom in the planet’s harshest conditions, a sudden yank or flick on Luke’s part would decapitate the bloom from its stem. Aunt Beru often said there was no greater capacity for destruction than a twelve-year old boy, and unlike moisture vaporators, droids, or machinery of any kind, Luke wouldn’t be able to repair a broken flower.
And it wasn’t just any flower. Tatooine wasn’t known for producing much of anything besides sand - one of the reasons Luke was captivated by the most meager and pathetic vegetation that managed to grow for a time on partially shaded crags and canyon crevices before the twin suns charred them to brown husks. Green was a foreign color, and although he’d heard stories of forest covered planets with seas of trees, the images he conjured in his mind were nothing compared to holding and seeing it in front of him.
The Dune Sundrop was so rare, it was nearly a myth, but with five creamy-white petals making the shape of a star and a crimson pistil in the center, it was immediately recognizable to anyone who lived on Tatooine. Luke had heard the elderly women in Anchorhead tell fanciful stories of how the flower didn’t grow, it was forged from the planet itself - reborn of the sand and suns at the will of some higher power for a chosen being to discover; but he dismissed those as wild legends. After all, there had been nothing ethereal or supernatural about stumbling across a womp rat on the outskirts of the farm digging up the flower for a mid-morning snack. He’d sent it scurrying with a blaster bolt, too preoccupied with the burst of green protruding from the sand mound to focus on shooting down the creature.
That was how Luke found himself cradling the flower in his palms as he walked back to the homestead, imitating Aunt Beru’s tender smiles and demeanor, and the way she would cradle him in her arms after he woke up haggard from a nightmare. Her soothing voice and warm embraces were safe and comforting, lulling him back to sleep. Luke found that the gentleness came easily to him, almost as natural as his innate sense of mechanics, and he bestowed the flower with a wide, toothy grin, wondering what he should do with it. Flowers were usually given as precious tokens to convey love, happiness, or companionship. He thought of his Aunt and Uncle, but that didn’t sit right with him. A nudge in the back of Luke’s mind that raised the hairs on his arms forced him to search further inwards, past his friendships with other school-aged children, past the jovial shop owners who wrapped extra sweets for him when he visited Anchorhead with Uncle Owen, until he finally reached a spark of light. Through it, like plunging into a mirror, he saw the outline of a familiar hut and the blurred image of a scruffy man in oversized robes observing him from afar.
Luke didn’t know much about Ben. Other than Uncle Owen’s pointed lectures about staying away from him, his name was hardly mentioned in the homestead, but Luke felt the weight of Ben’s gaze upon them at various times and days. There was no rhyme or reason to when his presence appeared, but it was one that Luke was familiar with in a way he didn’t understand. Although Aunt Beru’s insistence that she bought the T-16 Skyhopper toy from the Jawas convinced a grumpy Uncle Owen, Luke’s senses were sharp, and he knew without any proof that she had lied. As much as his aunt and uncle were his home, somehow Ben fit into that equation too because despite his uncle’s warnings that Ben was a danger and menace, Luke had only ever felt safe when the hermit was nearby.
“Luke!” Aunt Beru called from the entryway. “All done with your chores? Do you want a little snack?”
Luke tucked the flower on the inside pocket of his tunic before his aunt emerged up the steps with a plate of dried fruits and nuts. He wiped beads of sweat from his forehead. Though it was only mid-morning, the twin suns burned relentlessly as they climbed higher in the sky. Morning hot was at least a little more bearable than afternoon hot.
“Uh-huh,” he said, stuffing a few in his mouth and pocketing several more.
Aunt Beru twirled to set the plate down on the top step behind her, licked her thumb, and spun back to rub Luke’s temple in one fluid motion. “You just don’t seem to stay clean, do you?” she asked with an impish smile.
Luke huffed, ducking under a second swipe of her thumb. “S’not like I rolled around in the sand.”
“I seem to remember a little boy burrowing in the sand around our vaporators and pretending to be a Krayt Dragon,” she said, her eyes twinkling as she tried to catch Luke bobbing and weaving out of her grasp. “I’d never heard Owen shriek so loudly as when you burst through in front of him with your little hands bared like claws.”
Luke giggled, circling around her and swiping more food.
“Would you stand still? You’re worse than a womp rat.”
“I’m just going to get dirty again,” Luke countered.
“Is that so? Where are you off to today?”
He contemplated lying for a brief moment, but Uncle Owen was in Mos Eisley with a few other local moisture farmers to attempt to advocate for lower water taxes (it was the first time in Luke’s memory that his uncle willingly played friendly with his competition) and wouldn’t return until tomorrow morning. While Aunt Beru was strict in her own sense - always ensuring Luke’s face was clean, for example - she was less rigid than Uncle Owen and more easily persuaded, especially when it was just the two of them.
“I wanted to visit Ben,” he said, twisting his fingers through the fabric of his tunic.
Aunt Beru’s forehead creased, but she didn’t pronounce an immediate no, so Luke was in good shape to plead his case.
“He watches us sometimes,” he continued, “and I heard Uncle Owen say that there hasn’t been much trouble with Tusken Raiders recently. It’s because of Ben. He’s protecting us.”
“Your uncle - ” she began.
“I know, I know. Uncle Owen hates Ben.” Luke toed the sand with his boot.
Aunt Beru knelt down in front of him so they were eye to eye.
“It’s complicated,” she said, brushing sand out of his hair. “What’s this all about?”
Luke wiggled his hand up his tunic and held out the flower. His aunt sucked in a biting breath and she searched his face for understanding.
“I found it,” he said with a shrug. “I think it belongs with Ben.”
“Your grandmother once told me that the Dune Sundrop will speak to those who will listen. What does it tell you?”
Luke scrunched his nose at the idea of a talking flower, as though real life and bedtime stories were suddenly one in the same, but if his grandmother believed it, then maybe, once upon a time, she said the same thing to his father, and if his father believed it…
He pressed the petals to his ear and closed his eyes, feeling both foolish and hopeful. There were no declarations, not even the barest whisper, but a shimmering thread inside of him flickered, pulsing and thrumming like a heartbeat in sync with his own. It hummed with a sense of urgency to go to Ben. There was conviction in the feeling, the same as when Luke knew a sandstorm was brewing. He couldn’t understand how he knew, he just did. And he’d never been wrong. Uncle Owen called him lucky, but luck didn’t explain the nameless energy within him. Now it was pulling him towards Ben, nearly knocking Luke’s knees out from underneath him, but he steadied himself on Aunt Beru’s shoulders and squeezed his eyelids shut, trying to grab a hold of the wavering light. It danced around him, evading his mental grasp, but Luke knew there was something on the other end. He plucked the thread again, determined to understand, but as he inched closer to the flicker, it was swallowed up and shrouded by a shadowy, impenetrable mist, and he felt like an insect to a bantha as he brushed up against it.
If he could push through! Before he reached out again, it fizzled out, and he was left alone in his own mind, the faint lub-dubs softening to silence.
He blinked his eyes open, squinting under the suns’ intensity until Aunt Beru came back into focus.
“It has something to do with Ben.”
His aunt’s smile was small and sad as she combed her fingers through his sunkissed blond hair. “Like you said, Ben comes by every now and again to keep an eye on us. He’ll be back, and you can give him the flower then. Not even your uncle would dare cross paths with the Dune Sundrop.”
An unignorable feeling of urgency coursed through Luke’s veins, and he fought back the urge to sprint straight to Ben right then and there. It settled uncomfortably in the pit of his stomach, a nagging, pestilent weight. He shifted from foot to foot, chewing on the inside of his lip.
“It can’t wait,” he whined. “I have to go now. Please let me go, Aunt Beru. Ben’s farm isn’t more than an hour away on the speeder. Please, please, please?”
He drew out his last please with a pleading face and twinkling eyes that he hoped would appease his aunt. She seemed to fight internally as Luke silently begged, but finally her gaze grew glossy, as she relented in a dreamlike voice, “All right, you can go to Ben’s.”
“Yes!” Luke slammed into her waist with a hug that nearly toppled her over and dropped the flower back inside his tunic for safekeeping. “Thank you, Aunt Beru. I’ll be safe, I promise. I’m a heck of a shot with the rifle.”
“Hmm?” Aunt Beru rubbed the side of her head before placing her hand on Luke’s shoulder. She blinked several times at him. “Hold on just a second,” she said, and he drooped. “I…” Her nose crinkled as she studied his face. “Well…you go straight to Ben’s and then come straight home. No lollygagging or snooping for trouble. Don’t you dare drive like a maniac either, I’ve seen the way you pilot that skyhopper with your friends, and your uncle will pitch a fit if you crash the speeder again.”
Luke nodded with the most innocent grin he could muster under the circumstances. It’d actually worked! He sped off to V-35 in the garage with Aunt Beru hot on his heels. The courier was a far outdated model at this point, but thanks to Luke’s knack for mechanics, she still ran without too much trouble. He grabbed a few tools and tossed them in the passenger’s seat - just in case - and wedged the hunting rifle at an angle so it fit. He crouched under the power steering - being small for his age had its advantages - and hotwired the ignition. It rolled over once, twice, then rumbled to life with the motorized equivalent of a cough before it wobbled into the air. There was nothing special about riding the courier, but he’d soon have enough credits saved up to get his own landspeeder. The X-34 model was advertised at reaching 155mph, but Luke would bet the entire farm that with a few modifications, it would easily clear 200mph.
“And I want you back at least an hour before the sun’s set, Luke. We may not have had any issues with the Tusken Raider’s lately, but they grow bolder at night. Luke? Are you listening to me?”
Luke popped his head back up.
“Course I am. No crazy maneuvers or high speeds. And I’ll be home by dusk.”
“Before dusk,” Aunt Beru corrected, wagging a finger at him. “Or, by the suns, I’ll sell your skyhopper the first chance I get.” Her expression softened. “How are you already grubby again?” She licked her thumb and rubbed grease off his chin. This time, Luke let her without any fuss. “You be safe,” she said, “and smart.”
“I always am!”
Aunt Beru rolled her eyes, a gesture that Luke pointedly ignored since she was always the one to clean up bruises and scrapes after his more adventurous outings with Biggs, and he pulled his goggles on, fastening the straps tightly against his head. She pressed a kiss to his check, and though he pretended to scrunch up his face, it was only for show. He never minded his aunt’s affection. Before she stepped back, she plopped a bag into his lap.
“You’ll be hungry in no time,” she said with a wink.
“Love you, Aunt Beru,” he said.
He saw her lips move, but didn’t hear her response as he revved up the engine and the speeder surged forward.
Flying was as natural as breathing to Luke, and he settled into a comfortable reverie, allowing instincts to take over. His mind wandered to the horizon, to daydreams of the future. One day, he would breach the atmosphere and soar across space in his own starship, saying good riddance to the bleak, sandy rock he was currently stuck on. Not that he wouldn’t miss his aunt and uncle, but there was an entire galaxy at his fingertips, planets and moons and fizzled out stars waiting to be explored, and Luke wanted to see and experience it all: close scrapes with pirates, adventures to find hidden treasures, shoot-outs with ruffians and bounty hunters…
Truth be told, he longed to see anything other than the familiar shades of dull brown, beige, and grey that all blurred together as the vast desert opened up before him.
***
Tatooine. Of all the planets in the known galaxy, his old master had retreated to this backwards, forsaken, dust ball of a planet to hide as a pathetic hermit. Obi-Wan was a foolish, weak old man for giving in to such sentimental folly. Perhaps he thought that he would be too afraid to return, to step foot in the blistering, irritating sand and all the past memories and secrets the planet held, but as Darth Vader disembarked from his ship, fear was the thing furthest from his mind. Voices from the past whispered upon the wind that he batted away like pestilent insects. No, there was nothing here for him anymore, only endless dunes and tombs.
And Obi-Wan.
Vader clenched his right hand, leather creaking under the pressure of his fist. The Dune Sea sprawled out in front of him, a wasteland burning under the heat of the binary suns looming directly overhead that extended in every direction. It was bright, blindingly so, and the lenses in his mask adjusted to the overabundance of light automatically. They bathed the rocky summits at the edge of the horizon in a red glare, giving them the impression of a predator’s bloody teeth. He scanned them, zeroing in on one formation in particular with a trio of blunt peaks. The Jawa had said to follow the trident - Kenobi’s hovel was carved out from its leeward side. It had been all too easy buying the Jawa’s information with glossy credits then snapping its neck with a mere flick of his wrist.
Vader summoned the Force around him, masking his presence, and marched through the desert like a god of death preparing to pronounce doom. Grains of sand flitted around him, lodging their way into his boots and encrusting the hem of his cape. Still, he stalked onwards, not breaking pace despite the awkward grinding in his prosthetics. He was no stranger to discomfort, and would not allow it to hinder him. Not even Tatooine could save Obi-Wan from his wrath.