Chapter Text
Fear and desperation, the sounds of the Sarlacc Pit, gnashing teeth and the guttural sounds that came from within, the sounds and slashing tentacle like appendages spelling out some imminent doom for a uncommonly small sandy haired boy barely hanging onto consciousness under the heat of the binary sun’s light and the suffocating sands of Tatooine.
Tears broke over the youth’s desperate face, looking through coarse and stinging sand speckled eyes raking over the dunes of blistering sand, for a rescue that won’t come. Fighting sand from straining lungs. The end of a slight hope.
‘Luke!?’ He could hear Aunt Beru almost call through his deadened ears, harsh against a sandstorm wind, an image hazy in his mind, so real and yet — not there, like just another mirage, and yet —
“Luke!!!? Luke!” One word repeated, the shrill voice of a seven year old boy frantic to help his friend escape from the gaping maw of certain death.
“LUKE!!!”
Biggs. Rescue. Safety.
Too late.
Grip slowly failing and light slowly fading, time’s running out for both panicked boys.
The sand whipped around in cutting torrents on the wind, getting everywhere.
‘I don’t like sand...” the voice is unfamiliar, sending warning signals through the young boy’s brain as the pit closes round him. Voices replaced with gnashing teeth and mechanical breaths from corrupted lungs.
“Luke!!!”
Luke jolts up in a bed just as a bone breaking jaw with rows of armor sharp teeth clamp down over him, blocking out the light of binary suns. Biggs’ frantic voice morphing then into Leia’s.
There’s a pounding at the door, against the pounding of his head, both of which he ignores. He just can’t face them, can’t talk to them, the crushing pain, anger even, the fear pushing down on him, growing around him like a security blanket in the arms of a scared child. He takes a shaking breath.
‘Clear your mind,’ he hears Ben, a distance away, but if by illusion, wishful thinking, or by force, he avoids it, leaning back against a cloud like pillow, wishes he could drift back off, but the pounding in his head is back, with a vengeance.
“I’m fine,” why should he burden her when she was burdened enough? “I’m fine, Leia.” He tries to brush it off, but there’s another knock he knows is Han, a ‘you alright in there kid?’ Something said to Leia in a tone Luke now knows as Han being flirtatious. Leia’s returning answer almost makes Luke smile.