Disclaimer: None of this is mine. The myth referenced is the Greek story of Tantalus, the progenitor of the house of Atreus. All the other characters belong to George.

Also, please note that Kitster Banai is a very opinionated person. As with any work of fiction, the opinions of the character do not necessarily reflect those of the author.

Patriarchy
rule of the father

Fathers, Kitster Banai learned at a very young age, always desire the destruction of their children.

When Kitster was a child, he and Anakin would divide the rare free time their masters gave them between the spaceport and the storyteller's booth in the marketplace. The spaceport was a magical place, of course, and the chance to talk with passing pilots and spacers was never one to be passed up. But the port was usually most active at or just after dark. And so, on those rare afternoons when their masters were feeling generous (and the even rarer days when their masters' generosity coincided), the boys would buy a couple of pallies and hurry to Mother Dorja's booth.

Mother Dorja was an outlander originally. This alone lent her a certain air of mystery, and the children of the slave quarters drank up her words like water. She had an endless supply of stories, and most of them had never been told on Tatooine before.

It was through Mother Dorja's stories that Kitster learned about fathers. He had no experience of his own. He'd never met his father. Anakin didn't know his father either. Most of the children in the slave quarters didn't. Kitster himself was the object of some envy—he at least knew who his father was, knew his name and everything. Most of the others didn't even know that much.

He used to dream about his father. On late nights, when the air had cooled enough that you needed a blanket, he and Anakin would sit outside on Anakin's porch, looking at the stars and making endless plans.

Anakin had decided that he was going to be a pilot. Sometimes he said that he was going to be a Jedi too, or maybe a pirate like Akar Hinil, who raided slaving ships, freeing the captives and taking all the valuables to give to the poor. Kitster liked that idea, and Anakin said they could be pirates together, but they always argued about who would be captain and who would be the lowly co-captain.

Sometimes, though, Kitster said that his father was going to come back for him. He was certain of this, the way he was certain that the suns were in the sky and that sand between your toes was the most annoying feeling in the universe. When his father came, Kitster would make sure that he took Anakin and Shmi with them when they left Tatooine, and they would all start a new life somewhere out there in the stars together.

That was before either of them understood about fathers.

Mother Dorja told a story once about a man from Sedui who wanted to test the gods. She'd only told it once. Anakin had been very bothered by the story, but Kitster thought it was just silly. It was only a story, after all, and it wasn't even particularly exciting.

In the story, the man had decided to invite the gods to his house for a feast. He had all the best dishes prepared in the traditional way, and his house was decorated so beautifully that it looked like a god's palace. In fact, he was certain that the gods and their palaces couldn't really be any better than he was himself. So he decided to test them.

It would have to be the perfect test. Something that, when they failed, would shame the gods so completely that they would be forced to acknowledge him. And he knew exactly what that test would have to be. The gods had only one taboo. They would not eat the flesh of a sentient being.

So the man had his own son killed and served to the gods at the feast.

Anakin had been terrified by the story. His eyes grew big and round when Mother Dorja told about the boy's death, and he screamed as if he'd seen a ghost. When Kitster asked him about it later, he said that he had.

Other children might have laughed at that, but Kitster knew better. Anakin saw things sometimes. It was just part of who he was, like the way Kitster was good with numbers and Seek was a natural at ball and Meli could always find you in hide and spy.

So they didn't talk about the story again. Everything was just easier that way.

Kitster's father, of course, never came. But what was worse, far worse, was that Anakin's did.

Oh, the Jedi wasn't really his father, of course. But he was the one who came for Anakin, who promised him a better life with him among the stars. And wasn't that what fathers were supposed to do?

But Kitster and Anakin were both still too young to really understand about fathers. That would come later. For Kitster, it came when he finally met his father. The man he'd spent most of his childhood dreaming about was too soaked in alcohol to even recognize his name.

For Anakin, it came with the war.

They had all thought, when Anakin left, that he was going out into the stars to live the life they all dreamed of. But no. The Jedi was simply another man preparing a feast for his god.

He received a few letters, now and then. They were written in their old Huttese code from the shop days, but the words were all new, dark and violent.

Anakin said he wrote to him because he didn't know who else there was. He had two fathers now, but they would not understand, and he could not tell Padmé. He could not bear the idea that the war would touch her too.

Kitster remembered the bright-eyed boy who was his friend, the boy who wanted nothing more than to swap stories about space travel over a good ruby bliel, the boy who just wanted to help people. And he tried to picture that boy going to war, tried to picture him fighting and killing, but he could never quite manage it. Something about the image was justwrong. There was something broken about it, like looking into a cracked mirror and seeing someone else's face.

His mind formed a vague picture of the Jedi Council, of Kenobi, of the Chancellor, based on Anakin's descriptions of them. He tried to imagine them, Kenobi and Palpatine, sending his friend off to war, as though the grand destiny Anakin and he had imagined one night over warm cups of tzai was nothing more, in the end, than orders and duty and blood and death. And he thought to himself, Is this what fathers do to their children?

In the end, what happened was perhaps inevitable. Everything fell apart. The gods came down and ate among mortals and never knew that the food they ate was the flesh of their own children. And Anakin Skywalker became a father.

Kitster was aware that this was supposed to be a secret, but he was not particularly impressed by Kenobi's reasoning. Kenobi had given Anakin over to the gods. Kitster was not interested in hearing him denounce what the gods had made of his offering.

Kenobi gave the child of promise into the keeping of Owen and Beru Lars. He told them the boy must be kept hidden from his father, and from his father's father. And when he was gone into the desert, Kitster advised them that, if they had any sense, they would keep the boy safe from bothof his father's fathers.

They looked at him with eyes that had already seen too much, and he knew that they understood.

And now, more than twenty years later, here is this boy whose name means light, with his eyes that see things that are not and his certainty that there is a way to be good again. (Kitster remembers when Anakin was like that, and for a moment he almost sees what the boy sees.)

The boy is Anakin's son, and he wants the story.

Kitster asks him why.

The boy looks down, stirring his ruby bliel absently with his finger. "Perhaps, in the story, I can find forgiveness," he says.

It is not the answer Kitster expected, and so he says, "Forgiveness? For who?"

Luke keeps stirring his drink, but his voice holds all the conviction of the desperate. "For my father," he says. "For the Jedi. For the Republic. Even for the Emperor, maybe. For myself, too." His stirring stops and he says, more quietly, "Forgiveness for everyone."

"In a story?" The boy is either mad or wiser than all of them, and Kitster isn't certain which would hurt less.

"Isn't that the only way?" the boy asks.

And so Kitster tells him.

Perhaps this boy will be the one to save them all.