Dreamflood

by Aurnien

In every torchlight flicker flaming dreams…

- Albrecht Haushofer, "XXVI: Vision of the Torch"

Summary: The Emperor Palpatine has discovered a way to destroy his opponents and gain a younger, stronger, apprentice in the son of Skywalker, all in one stroke; but no one could have predicted the revelations Tatooine has in store for the Skywalkers. Trapped in a collective dreamworld with Vader by a Force-fed sandstorm after rescuing Han Solo, the Rebels and Imperials must learn to work together in a quest to help Vader balance the Force by discovering himself--and to do that he must accept the heritage his mother could not bring herself to speak of...his heritage, by blood, as one of the Sandpeople.

Author's Notes: I have occasionally come across fics that portray Anakin and Shmi Skywalker as galactic nomads, or from the Unknown Regions, or from some other planet before arriving on Tatooine when Anakin was three. These never seemed plausible to me. Something in Anakin and Luke and Shmi tells me that they belong in the desert, that Skywalkers belong on Tatooine. I started researching Tatooine and its natives on Wookiepedia and and found enough to support my ideas.

I think the Tusken Raiders captured Shmi, specifically, for a reason that may or may not have been prompted by Palpatine but would have occurred to them anyway. I think Anakin's rage and skill as a warrior could have a genetic basis, and I think the Tuskens have a lot of experience in learning how to control rage. I think Shmi was just a little too compassionate for a non-Jedi to not have been touched by the Maker. I think the prophecy of the Chosen One and the virgin birth are a little too convenient to be the product of random chance. In short, I think that the Skywalkers are Tusken Raiders, and I believe that this idea could be actually be unspoken canon.

This fic is an ROTJ AU, taking the idea and running with it so that Star Wars ends on Tatooine, as it began on Tatooine. (I mean really, wtf is with Endor? It's so random.) It's inspired by the book Labyrinth, written by someone whose name I don't remember, and is meant to be an exploration of both my idea and Vader's mind. Updates will be slow, because I revise my writing quite a lot before posting it, and I'm also writing a Superman fic.

Please look at the cover I made for this fic, to be seen here: www.free-webspace.biz/aurnien/misc/dfcover.jpg

I guess I should say, just to make it clear, that the girl in this prologue is Shmi. Bonus points to whoever knows who An'akk'akrin is.

Dreamflood

prologue

O wind, rend open the heat,
cut apart the heat,
rend it to tatters.
Cut the heat -
plough through it,
turning it on either side
of your path.

- H.D.: "Heat"

63 BBY, Valley of the Spirits, Tatooine.

Darkness. The white heat which burns the sand during the day is dissipating, radiating up from the canyon walls and blowing off in great sheets of dust from the dunes, shifting them, moving them over the desert in advancing endless waves. Hidden life emerges from the desert at night, small mammals which conserve energy by sleeping in the daytime, slithering scuttling reptilian things searching for food, insects and sand-mites. Sentients hunting their prey for pay, or out in the heart of the nascent settlements seeking a fulfillment they can never really find.

Cocooned in the deep shadow of a rhyolitic ridge, snug in her parents' tent on the outskirts of the tribal camp, a native girl-child dreams.

A small boy stands determined against the hot wind, shielding her from the worst of its blast while she works. Her small frustrated fingers fumble with banthahide leather straps, trying to piece together the wrappings she will wear on her naming-day. She has to put it together quickly, for it is almost morning, with dawn-fingers streaking the sky red and orange bright against the trembling beginnings of scudding clouds, and the naming ceremony is nigh. But she cannot figure out how to put the pieces together, she is missing something vital and does not know what it is.

Frustrated and near despair, she wraps a thick band of leather over the internal skullpiece that holds the woman-mask in place, struggling to keep it stretched in place as she pulls it around to the other side. Her arms are trembling with the effort and it slip-snaps out of her hand; tears spring to her eyes.

Hurry up, the boy says placidly. His voice is indifferent, inundated with his natural inclination to command, but despite his words he will wait for her to finish. The heated wind rips at his lightdark hair, radiant blue eyes follow the movement of her hands. He and the girl-child are close in age, not yet nine year-cycles or eighteen seasons, and the slick bones and muscles under his tender skin have not stopped growing.

Yet he stands determined against the raging suns-driven wind, to protect her, defying the elements as no adult would dare to do. They are in this together, as brother and sister, father and daughter, mother and son; she imagines she can see their shared blood streaking through his veins. The fact of their relationship is indisputable, for only family members are allowed to view each others' faces, and theirs are naked and bare, scrubbed by the sandy wind. They will protect each other with a passion, but their respective efforts are worth nothing right now.

I can't, she sniffles. I don't know how.

We have little time, he reminds her. Don't waste it.

The girl-child turns pleading eyes to his, trembling with the intimacy of their naked gaze. An'akk'akrin, will you help me?

He frowns fiercely, mulling over her question. Perhaps he will; after all, he is to look after her. Perhaps he won't; it is not his duty to do her duty for her. Sand trickles down the streaming river of his hair.

Maybe it's not for you, he suggests at last.

What do you mean? she asks, but the boy-child is already cocking his head to listen to something far off in the distance. She listens too, but nothing enters her ears but the gritty sound of sand carried by the roiling wind passing, diverted on either side of her by An'akk'akrin's legs. What is it?

He does not respond, but turns his face to the side, into the loud rattling wind. Shimmering with sand, his hair whips back into his face. No! she cries, reaching for his legs to bring him back, but she is anchored to the sand and cannot move far enough. An'akk'akrin!

The dust-storm intensifies. Nothing is audible now beyond the screaming wind; his name escapes her mouth and is stolen away by the sand-rivulets streaming from his hair. The air is tangible, hot and dry, saturated with sand particles, a heavy weight pressing her away from her companion. She cannot see beyond his blackened silhouette. Heart pounding with fear, she strains to reach him, but is distracted as the wind rips a leather strap from her small, weak hand. The woman-mask is already gone, and as she watches, the rest of the cloth and leather rise into the air, stolen away by billowing sand.

She turns back to An'akk'akrin as he turns back to her. His face has been scoured clean by the hot wind, gleaming white bone exposed and pitted by bouncing sand particles, a horrific skull-mask framed against the sandy air by his hair flaring out into a helmet-shape. The scream claws its way from her belly, forces its way out through her sand-caked lips, and is utterly lost in the howls of the wind, but she keeps on screaming and screaming and

wakes up with her screams vibrating through her pounding head, mouth gasping open, until she realizes that the bone-shattering sound is coming from outside her parents' brittle bantha-hide tent.

The sharp, acrid scent of smoke drags her further out of her sleep-gummed state into apprehensive awareness. "Mother?" she whimpers, reaching out a pale nude hand. But there is no response—her family is gone.

Outside the screaming continues, filtered through metallic breathing-masks, punctuated by shouts and harsh noise from raw voices, sprinkled with the unmistakable wet splat of gaderffis penetrating flesh and the high-pitched whine of blaster rifles. Singed air trickles into her nostrils as a particularly loud shot bangs by the tent.

Paralysed by the iron band of fear squeezing her heart in its dragon-claws, the girl-child huddles beneath her rough blankets, wishing in her most secret heart for the battle to go away, to be consumed by the burning twin suns. Such wishes, she knows, are not befitting of a Ghorfa; her people are destined for bloody greatness, particularly those of her own tribe; cowardliness is repugnant to them. Her family is outside, among the murderous raiders, while she cowers in here against the wild fury of the sand-storm raid. When it is over she will surely be punished; the elders will know her wish, for they always know, and she will be beaten, or left behind, sacrificed to the thirsty arid sands.

She is still fogged with the residue of her nightmare when there is an explosion of sound, rocking her backwards into the wall, white lights burst behind her eyelids and she claps her hands to her shattered ears. Stunned into submission, she squeezes her eyes shut tight against the storm and shoves herself back into the wall as far as it will stretch, curling up imagining herself a tiny sand-mite safe and cool in the dunes.

She screams when she feels on her skin the storm breezing open the tent flap and snagging her arm in an iron grip.

"An'akk'akrin!" erupts rhyolitic from her volcano throat, the name of her brother father son from the nightmare, and the claws digging into her arm tighten painfully, some hardness cracks across her cheek, setting her face on fire. Her vision is clearing, white fire fading into hazy blurry shapes, sharpening into the silhouette of an human crouching in front of her, an enormous male with a bestial snarl on his pitted ugly face. Growling something in a harsh tongue, he barks with laughter when she doesn't respond, and yanks at her flopping wrist.

The girl-child cannot move, she blinks away the lingering whiteness in her vision, transfixed by the outlander human's face, his starlit demon skin. His is the first face she has seen other than those of her parents and sister, his kind come to the desert in falling stars that burn in the sky and hatch like krayt eggs once they have landed on the desert floor, they fight amongst themselves and disrupt the lives of the Ghorfa and the Jawas who were once one race. They come from the sky, from other suns

"I'll visit them all one day," An'akk'akrin swears

down to disrupt the way of the desert, their faces and hands shamefully bare. The desert weathers them like stone, marks them for its own, one day (the elders say) it will claim them all.

The mark on her cheek flares with heat, prompting a cold river of realization trickling down her spine. She wears neither her child-wrappings nor the woman-mask she constructed in her dream: her face is nude before the outlander.

It is a sentence of exile and death bound together.

"No! No! " she screams, tugging to free herself from the outlander's stone hand, to no avail. He is a grown man, and she is only a weak child; he laughs like rock cracking and drags her through river-sand outside, picks her up and throws her over his shoulder, cold fingers almost penetrating the sacred flesh of her thigh. Flailing her limbs makes no difference and she can no longer hear her own shrill, thin screams through the roiling blood slamming through her ears.

Jounced, jolted, brain shaken in her skull, the girl-child sees out of the corner of her eye her mother's woman-mask, watches helplessly the woman running toward her and the outlander, watches her father hold her back. Above the crackling of fire and her own shrieking, his filtered raging voice whips past her on the heated wind: "She is outcast now! "

Tears swell into her eyes, her vision blurs to black and white and flame. Smoke billows up to obscure the stars; the camp is burning.

Ripped away from all she has ever known, she screams and screams. She does not understand the word the outlander keeps on snarling to her, but she will come to know it more intimately than any other word in the harsh language he speaks.

Slave.