There wasn't time to take a shuttle down. That was okay. From this high above the orbit of the world where Luke had grown up, he could see the curvature of the planet, and the thin shell of breathable atmosphere that blanketed the dusty surface.
He closed his senses to the viewport and the coolly impersonal light coming through it, to the subliminal hum of the engines that vibrated the deck beneath his feet, to the recycled sterile smell of the ship's air, and to the cool, slightly humid feel of it.
Luke thought instead of the intense blistering brilliance of the twin suns, glaring down so that exposed skin stung and the smallest scrap of shade seemed like a blessing from the Force. Of the acrid scorched-earth smell that pervaded everything, of the heat that was a solid, enveloping full-body sensation. Of the sand, yes, coarse glassy grains and ones as fine as dust, that worked their way into everything at all times, so that days later and after several showers and launderings there would still be a few gritty particles in the seams of clothing, in scalps, in the toes of boots.
He saw himself at the homestead where he had grown up. Luke chose to see it as it had looked when he'd lived there, before the Empire came, before the tenant who'd taken over when he was gone had rebuilt it to look just slightly different, so that every time he saw the place he felt a little shock of balked recognition.
There was the white pourstone entry dome, and the tech dome with its hinged roof leading to the garage belowground, and the open crater with the living pit at the bottom, passages leading off from it into the other rooms, all under the ground.
It was more comfortable underground, Luke knew, but he didn't think himself inside. At the lip of the crater the dusty, relentless wind, wailing softly, pulled at his hair and made the tough, leathery funnel flowers planted around it, among the various power conduits and tanks, shiver and move.
Luke turned with the wind, away from what might be the only home he'd ever know. Not far away, under the watch of one of the many tall GX-8 vaporators scattered about the property, there was a stretch of scorched ground, baked hard with a few handfuls of sand blown about over it. A few cacta bushes, stripped almost bare by hungry dewbacks, struggled to recover and regrow.
It looked just the same as any other stretch of land out over here. Luke knew better.
This was their graveyard.
When he'd been very young his uncle had removed the headstones, and he'd never explained why. Luke had never forgotten where it was, though.
In reality, the first time he had returned home he had brought new headstones. Only for Owen and Beru; he hadn't understood the reasons why his uncle hadn't wanted anyone to know where Edern, Shmi, and Cliegg had been buried, but he could respect them.
But when he imagined himself here, as now, there were no markers. If he focused on the ground he would see that it had been disturbed a little, and then tamped down, just like it had been when he turned away to go back to the sandcrawler where he'd left Ben and the droids.
Back then...
He hadn't been able to tell which had been his uncle and which his aunt.
He hadn't been able to bear looking at them - Luke had carried them in a tarp that had been in his landspeeder, so light that he could have convinced himself that he was moving bundles of japor sticks and not the people he loved most in the world.
He had covered them with it as he dug the grave with frantic strength, possessed with a desperate drive to act, to do something, to run, but tied back one more time, just this last time, by his obligation to them.
He had lowered them into it still covered by the tarp, his vision so blurred that he might as well have been blind, agony crowding his chest and belly and head. Then he had covered them over and tamped the dirt down over them, and at last, finally, he had fled.
But Luke wasn't here just to remember losing them. He knelt on the sandy ground, instantly feeling the heat soak up through his clothing. In his right hand there were some desert sage flowers tied loosely together. He laid them out, and for a long moment just watched the wind tug at them.
"Uncle, Aunt... I'm back," he said at last.
The wind quieted. The world stilled a little. The Force itself seemed to listen. Luke closed his eyes and breathed slowly, evenly. "There's so much that's happened since last time. So much has changed... There's so much I wish I could tell you."
His eyes burned, and it had nothing to do with the wind, or the dust, or the brilliance of the suns that pierced right through his eyelids.
"I love you, and... I miss you. And I'm sorry," he whispered. "I'm sorry that I wasn't the son you wanted. I was reckless and made you worry so many times. I am so, so sorry. I never really appreciated what you did for me, both of you."
Towards the end he had often argued with them, interpreted almost everything they said as personal criticism, an attack. The desire to leave and follow all those impossible distant dreams had burned more intensely than the suns.
But... he had stayed. He had stayed, even as he felt like his spirit was dying. He had never made a move to leave. He'd even argued with Biggs, more vehemently than he'd ever dared argue with his best friend before, when Biggs had suggested he just cut out.
For all that he'd been young and constantly dreaming of the stars, he had at least stayed loyal to his family.
Luke breathed, "I'm glad I didn't leave." Part of him never had. He'd left part of himself here, in the sand and the scorching wind. The child he'd been, who had barely known what loss was like, who had been angry and frustrated and yet...
"You know, it's funny," he told them. "When I was here all I wanted was to go... But you loved me, and I love you still, and..." He closed his eyes as fragments of memory rose, as numerous and scattered as the sand. Mostly little things. More of them when he'd been younger, sure... but even when he'd been nineteen, sometimes his aunt would sit with him in the evenings while he was stargazing. Sometimes he'd be cleaning a pile of filters and his uncle would sit at the same desk and join in, without a word.
He'd never abandoned them. At the same time, they'd never abandoned him.
He had been strange and rebellious, contrary, always longing for more than he had, always getting into trouble. They hadn't understood him. Luke had eavesdropped a few times, heard them worrying about him... If his uncle had been controlling, if his aunt had tried to gently discourage him, it was out of fear for him. They had loved him.
Years ago, Luke remembered, other kids had started to tease him about having no parents. He couldn't remember most of that very well; if it had just been once, or if it had happened many times, if he'd protested and been teased all the more for it, or if he'd been afraid to say something for fear that they'd stop being his friends, and they'd kept bringing it up anyway. But he did remember hearing them argue about it, about whether they should step in. How distressed his aunt had been. The conviction in his uncle's voice.
Of course he has real parents. No one could love their boy more.
Love was more than single moments. As glad as Luke was of them, as real and sincere as they had been - the love that had showed over long years, in countless little ways, the slow love... It was every bit as powerful.
"I didn't understand how happy you made me," he said.
And then, at last, he saw them. Side by side, as they had been in life, together. Uncle Owen was looking away, still a little unhappy, until his wife nudged him and he sighed and met Luke's eye and, reluctantly, shrugged. For her part Aunt Beru gazed steadily at him, her eyes wet but smiling.
Love and grief brought him to his feet. Luke bowed his head.
A coarse, callused hand gripped his shoulder. He stepped forwards into Beru's embrace, pressed his cheek into her homespun robes, and breathed her smell. She smoothed his hair, murmuring. Oh, Luke. Owen clasped and patted his shoulder and back, awkward in the face of more emotion than he ever liked to show, but he stayed.
Luke had left them behind, on the farm that they loved, and part of himself was with them. But at the same time, he carried them with him, wherever he went.
Eventually Luke opened his eyes back in the cool relative darkness of the forwards cabin of the ship, with his mechanical right hand splayed against the transparisteel viewport. For a moment the sense of them seemed to linger with him, as real as if they stood besides him.
It started to fade, and... he let it. They wouldn't be happy with his life, they wouldn't like it. With a last thought, a last silent vow to remember them, he turned away from the sight of home and thumbed his comlink on to speak to the cockpit.
"Okay." Once again his voice was collected and steady.
"You done, Luke?"
"Yes... for now. Let's go." He let a faint smile come to his voice. "Leia will be wondering what's kept us."