Title: Family
Author: upsidedownbutterfly
Summary: Maybe it isn't the family she imagined for herself as girl growing up outside Mos Eisley, but it's a family nonetheless. An attempt to answer the question: Why didn't Owen and Beru have more children?
Rating: PG
She's standing in the kitchen scolding Luke as he merrily smears his lunch across the table when it suddenly occurs to Beru that she's late. In an instant she's frozen, one hand halfway to her mouth, as the sights and sounds of her kitchen recede around her. She counts off the days again in her head and then counts them off once more just to be sure. By the time she ticks by the four-week mark for the third time, the dull thudding of her heart in her chest has become a gaffi stick crashing against her sternum.
There is no mistake this time, Beru is certain. Her last cycle began the same day as the Comet Run podrace over in Mos Espa; she recalls that much vividly as it had prompted a last-minute outfit change. That race however had been nearly – no, over – two months ago now. Which means Beru is very, definitely late.
A wave of nausea tears through her as the full weight of that realization slams into her like a herd of bantha, and suddenly Beru finds herself doubled over the kitchen sink clutching the countertop in a white-knuckle grip and taking deep, ragged breaths in an effort to settle her stomach. Morning sickness? she wonders between frantic gulps of air though the angle of the suns tells her it is well after noon. But she can think of no other explanation as to why the entire contents of the Maw have seemingly settled in her gut.
She's shaken off the worst of it by that evening when Owen returns hot and sweaty from his work in the fields. Beru meets him halfway up the outside stairway, eager to share her news. He'll be ecstatic, she knows; after all, they've been talking about having children since before they were even married. Yet when she opens her mouth to tell him, Beru finds herself inexplicably speechless. Her words die on her tongue, drowned in another rush of blood to her head.
"You're just nervous!" Dama exclaims breathily when Beru tells her the news, having fallen back on her oldest confidante after all efforts to tell Owen have failed. "Everyone is with their first one, Beru. It's normal," her sister adds reaching across the table to grasp Beru's hands in her own, and Beru finds herself nodding absently. Dama has always been the practical sister after all, forever ready with sound advice or steady reassurance, and intellectually, Beru knows that what she's saying makes sense.
Except Beru remembers a false alarm she and Owen had years ago, back before they were married. She'd been terrified then too, worries and doubts chasing each other unceasingly around her head: Would the baby be healthy? Could they afford to take care of him or her? Would she be a good mother? Yet at the same time, she had barely been able to keep herself from skipping between chores on her family's farm and on more than one occasion had caught herself reaching out unconsciously to stroke her belly with a reverence she'd never experienced before or since.
She doesn't feel like skipping now, Beru reflects, and if she touches her belly it's in attempt to relieve the cold, hard knot of fear that has settled there over the past day and a half. No, Beru is familiar with the nervousness Dama is describing – that fear of the unknown mixed with equal parts excitement for the future – but that's not what she's feeling right now.
"Jula ran into some stormtroopers in Anchorhead," Silya Darklighter tells her idly over lunch two days later as she refills Beru's glass of blue milk. Except suddenly she's not refilling anything anymore, because the milk is splashing onto the floor instead, coating the shattered remnants of Beru's glass as they lie scattered across the synstone.
Anchorhead! Beru's never heard of stormtroopers so close before. Mos Eisley, certainly, they patrol regularly, but that's what passes for a major spaceport on Tatooine, filled with smugglers and bounty hunters and any number of other wanted beings that might conceivably attract Imperial attention. Anchorhead is nothing more than a handful of buildings clustered together among the dunes with nothing that should interest the Empire or its stormtroopers unless…
She's halfway up the stairs racing for the surface before she's even aware that she's moved. Vaguely she is conscious of Silya calling after her in confusion, but Beru's pulse is hammering in her ears and she can't make out the other woman's words. The excuse she stutters back over her shoulder is flimsy, if even comprehensible at all, but she can worry about apologizing properly later.
She maxes out the speedometer on the landspeeder on the way back to the farmstead, heedless of the red warning light that tells her she's burning out the repulsorlifts. Owen is hard at work in the fields when she finds him, tuning one of the vaporators and lecturing about the proper calibration of refrigerator pipes to Luke balanced on his knee. Beru all but collapses on top of the pair them, clinging madly to them both with trembling arms. She refuses to let either of them out of her sight for the rest of the day.
She presents it to Owen as a forgone conclusion. For a time she even considers not telling him at all – or at least waiting until once it is all over – but ultimately she decides that if nothing else, her husband deserves to know. Maybe a part of her even hopes he'll find a way to talk her out of it.
"A child wouldn't be safe with us," she tells him, laying out her rationale in an even, steady voice even as behind her back her hands are clenched into fists so tight that the bite of nails into her palms is hard enough to draw blood. "You don't know that!" Owen howls in response, and there is such ferocious intensity in his words that Beru almost lets herself believe it.
But she remembers the terrible all-consuming panic that had sent her dashing from the Darklighters' and recalls the unease that lingers even now. That will be the rest of their lives, Beru knows. A life spent in fear, forever looking over their shoulders, waiting for the other shoe to drop. They will keep Luke as safe as they can for as long as they can, but Beru knows enough about this new Empire to be able to guess what will happen to them – and to anyone around them – if they fail. "I can't do that do a child, to our child, Owen."
He stalks from the room then, muttering darkly to himself, low vicious curses directed at Ben Kenobi, at Anakin Skywalker the step-brother he'd barely known, even at his own father for marrying Shmi all those years ago and turning what should have been a stranger's child into their responsibility. "It's not fair," he says at last, turning back towards her with shoulders suddenly slumped, and Beru only shakes her head. No, it isn't fair, but Beru is a daughter of Tatooine and she learned long ago that few things in life are.
She goes to a Chadra-Fan her sister knows in Mos Eisley, explaining to Dama when she asks that credits are tight and Luke is still young and they can't afford to feed another mouth. It's only half a lie really – credits are always tight but not so much they couldn't make it work.
It's over with in a few hours. Owen is gone from the house when she gets back. He'll be out in the fields, Beru knows, working off his frustration and rage on the vaporators. She doesn't begrudge him the distraction as she lies on their bed, staring blankly up at the ceiling, unable to stop her mind from replaying the events of the last few days over and over in brilliant, devastating detail.
It feels like hours before the tears come, trickling out from between eyelids she has squeezed shut against them until finally she gives in and lets herself cry – lets herself mourn – for the child she'll never know, for the family she'll never have, and for all her dreams for the future that she is just now realizing had been wrecked beyond repair on that day two years ago when the desert wind blew Ben Kenobi out of the east and onto their doorstep.
There's a scuffling noise from the doorway followed by the patter of tiny footsteps. Then the bed dips nearly imperceptibly, and Beru opens her eyes to find Luke sitting crouched beside her, holding out his ragged stuffed bantha to her in silent offering. She reaches out and draws him tight against her chest, patting his hair and kissing his cheeks and trying not to cry even harder at the guilt that washes through her. Luke may not be her own child, may not even be her – or Owen's – blood but that doesn't mean she doesn't love him as much as she's ever loved another being. In truth Beru can't imagine loving anyone, even a child of her own flesh and blood, more.
Yet here she is acting as though he isn't enough, as if their family isn't enough. And maybe it isn't the family she'd imagined for herself as girl growing up outside Mos Eisley, but Beru has a good, faithful husband who has adored her since she was barely sixteen years old and a happy, healthy child who she loves like her own son. Unorthodox, unexpected, but a family nonetheless, and Beru refuses to be so selfish as to not to be grateful for that.