The Other Side of the Coin
By Rey
The vapourator whirred smoothly, at last, after hours of tinkering under the baking suns. Owen sighed and hunched down, glaring at the recalcitrant piece of machinery. A good time for this particular vapourator to have broken down: on the very first day he must spend alone, as Beru was going home to her family in Bestine for a week, trying to recover emotionally from having delivered their stillborn firstborn yesterday afternoon. Owen had refused to come with her, convincing her that she needed to be surrounded by her mother and father now, pampered at her childhood home, and citing that he would be there with her in only a few days; only, he had never thought living alone, and subsequently dealing with such a grief alone, was this hard, even just for a day or three.
And as if he had not been tortured enough, this vapourator had acted up, the one closest to the twin graves, which he had rarely visited for the sheer pain of remembering things that he did not wish to remember, not now, not when Beru was not there to help him.
Not especially about her: the woman that he wished had been his birth mother.
And subsequently him, that ungrateful son of hers, who never sent word back to his own mother for years, her own flesh and blood, Owen's step-brother, who had come but too late.
Owen had tried to love her, to be there with her, to put a smile – however small – to her face, to be her son regardless of the lacking blood tie, but she had had her mind only on him, on why he had never sent word of his continued existence to her in these uncertain times.
And then she had been taken away viciously from them both.
The gravestones were covered well, to avoid targetted retaliation by the Tusken Raiders, survivors or maybe kin from the villageful of them that he had murdered, or so Owen had overheard. But Owen did not need such a reminder.
He remembered all too vividly.
Shmi Lars-Skywalker, the one closest to him, to the dratted vapourator, the most protected place his grieving father had been able to give her remains, before the man himself had followed his wife to death out of a broken heart not a year later.
And Cliegg Lars, directly beside her, as the man himself had wished in his last moments, ever faithful to the gentle, loving, hurting soul that he had tried to free.
But she had never been free, even after she had been bought away from Watto with all Credits that the father and son could afford. he – that ungrateful Jedi scum – had tied her up tightly in useless longing and worry, even to her last moments.
Because she had been on the way to Mos Espa, to her other adopted son Kitster, to ask if perchance he had made a contact, when the Tusken Raiders had come upon her.
And she had paid with her life.
But she had been Owen's mother too, more than the woman who had died delivering him, just as she had been the mother that Kitster had needed, from the few tales of his horrifying childhood that the other man had been willing to share, and thus he could not despise her for such a love.
Because Owen had loved her too, in the same intensity.
And he had taken her from all of them, knowingly or not, and then he was just gone again, leaving his remaining, grieving family, if not tied by blood.
And with that, the vapourator broke down once more, as a hydrospanner hit it with concussive force.
Laden with renewed grief and anger, Owen stumbled away, giving up on the vapourator as a lost course. The wound was still too raw, even after three years. He doubted he could return to this place to rework on it tomorrow, or the day after, or even the year after. He must simply broaden his farm then, but to the other side, save more Credits to buy another vapourator, set farthest from this place.
Author's Notes: As the unoriginal title said, I tried a shot on what Owen Lars might think about Anakin and Shmi, in just a glimpse. (More, though with another theme, will be in my chaptered story, Attachments, which is not posted yet.) Kitster being Shmi's adopted son was inspired by Fiarallel's idea in her story Children of the Desert. And thank you very, very much for Veritas1995 for pointing out certain crucial things! The story has already editted.