"Owen, he can't stay here forever. Most of his friends have gone. It means so much to him."
"I'll make it up to him next year. I promise."
"Luke's just not a farmer, Owen. He has too much of his father in him."
"That's what I'm afraid of."
Beru did not consider this to be the end of the conversation. Her husband Owen was loud and stubborn, and Beru had learned a quiet stubbornness of her own. She gazed at Owen steadily with her blue eyes, waiting for Owen to look up for his food. Eventually he did so, and Beru knew she had his attention.
"Owen, you cannot change what he is."
"He's family. He is one of us."
"He is more than that, and you know it. His father..."
"He is not his father, and I will see to it that he never becomes anything like that monster."
"His father," Beru pressed, "Is part of who he is. He gave Luke more than his name, he gave him his destiny."
"A queen ate with us at this very table. That doesn't make us royalty. We are defined by what we do, not who we come from. Remember Shmi, before she was my stepmother, she was a slave, who knows what before that. Anakin, well he was a slave, a racer, a pilot, a padawan, a Jedi, a Sith Lord. Always defined by what he was doing, not where he came from. Luke will be a farmer, if that is what before him."
"You forget that above all, Anakin was a person. Just like anyone of us. He cried more than either of us when Shmi died. I think he suffered more than any."
"Well those Tuskens may have suffered a little more from what I remember. I don't know which are the greater monster. I don't want Luke to know that kind of sorrow, that anger. I want him to stay safe here, with us. I will die before he follows Kenobi on some fool idealistic crusade."
"Owen, I think that is the closest you have ever come to saying you love the boy."
Owen glared shortly at Beru, his gaze softening for a moment before he looked again at his plate of food and finished his meal in silence.