The suns were dipping towards the horizon, the shadows of the vaporators stretching out across the yard and onto the dome of the house. Beru poked her head out of the archway to search for her tardy menfolk. Owen was cleaning his hands on a rag, striding across the yard. He brushed a habitual kiss on her cheek as he entered the dining room.
"Where's Luke?"
"I thought he was inside. Skiving again, the lazy brat," Owen grunted, sitting down and pouring himself a tumbler of milk.. Beru uncovered the platter and dished him out a plate of stew, turned with the serving spoon still in her hand.
"Luke! Dinner's ready! Lu-uke!" she sang out across the courtyard, drawing the name out with a lilt that made it two syllables.
Her nephew came pelting from the garage, combing his hair with his fingers and tucking in his shirt as he ran. Evidently some piece of machinery had been fascinating or challenging enough to distract him from her calls, but the smell of Beru Lars' stew was enough to reel in any teenage boy, distracted or not.
Owen gave Luke a glance that said, 'You're cutting it fine, son,' as the boy sat down, panting. Luke returned his best innocent smile.
"I got that extractor working," he said, already shovelling in the stew Beru handed to him.
"That'll please your aunt," Owen said noncommittally. Luke, probably knowing this was the extent of the praise he could expect, took a swig of milk. He glanced from Owen to Beru and back again, prodding his fork into his dinner, then drew a deep breath.
"I was thinking," he began. Here we go again, Beru thought. The phrase was Luke's usual preface to some unlikely request. I was thinking, I could go to Anchorhead and work on that vaporator tomorrow, I was thinking, I would really love to have a Skyhopper like Biggs', I was thinking, I could miss school to go to the fair.
Owen cast his eyes to the ceiling, and applied himself to his plate again, exhaling harshly. Not discouraged, Luke pressed on, "I'll be turning fifteen soon."
This sounded like the Skyhopper again, Beru observed. Well, they might not have as much money as the Darklighters, but—
"And I'll leave school after the next harvest."
"It'll be good to have you around the farm full-time," Owen grunted to his stew.
"Actually. I was thinking."
This must be something big, Beru thought, to need such elaborate preparation. A diffuse sense of dread seized her.
"I want to apply to the Academy to train as a pilot."
Luke, having flung down this gambit, leaned back in his chair. Owen shot him a quick glance from below lowered brows.
"Luke, that's out of the question. I need you on the farm."
Luke's face went sullen instantly, his eyebrows drawing together and mouth setting in the stubborn expression that always made him look like Anakin.
"Uncle Owen—" he protested, letting the words trail off into a whine.
"You aren't going and that's all there is to it. Now eat your dinner."
Luke scowled and began wolfing down his dinner, practically radiating disappointment and anger. Beru finished her own meal, glad to be able to escape the tension at the table.
"Have you both finished with the milk?"
Taking silence as consent, she picked up the jug of precious liquid and headed for the kitchen. She reached for her pot scrubber and the jar of scouring sand. Sifted and sterilized, the fine grains slid through her fingers. She had always known that Luke's childhood would pass, that sooner or later he would want to leave. She just had not expected it to be so soon. He had always said he wanted to be a pilot 'when I grow up—like my father'—and where had he picked up that fact?—but this was his first practical step towards it.
Luke came into the kitchen, a pile of plates in one hand, the stacked tumblers, drained of every drop of milk, balanced on the other. It had been one of his jobs to clear the table, when he was small, and he was still a child of habit. He set the crockery down on the worktop and slid open the dishwasher module. The plates were slotted into their wire rack with considerably more force than usual.
"Me and Biggs, we have it all worked out. We're gonna go together," Luke said forlornly. Beru sighed. Luke had been even more restless at school since Biggs had left; she knew the older boy was closest to him, and that Luke was something of a misfit among the other teens.
"It won't be for a while—years yet maybe. I thought I'd better let you get used to the idea. 'S not like I was going to leave next week."
"Owen will come around, Luke. Someday," Beru said gently, though her heart was aching.
"Yeah. One day.," Luke gloomed. He activated the doorseal of the dishwasher unit that captured every drop of water for recycling.
"You know it wouldn't be all fun being a pilot. Not like racing with your friends—it would be hard work."
Luke threw her the you-just-don't-get-it look familiar to parents of teenagers across the galaxy.
"But it's flying, Auntie. Not like fixing stupid vaporators all day every day. I don't want to be stuck doing that for the rest of my life."
Indeed, while flying, for other people, was a mere means of getting from place to place, for Luke it was as natural as learning to walk, as necessary as breathing, or so his aunt sometimes thought.
"And it's dangerous. You don't want to end up a fighter pilot for the Empire."
"No fears! I'm not flying for them!"
It might not be as simple as that, Beru thought. Surely by any standards Luke was an exceptionally good pilot, good enough for the TIE fighters. The Empire wasn't likely to give him that choice. Luke leaned against the worktop, wrinkling his nose.
"If the New Order was the best thing since blue milk, I guess they wouldn't keep telling and telling us that, in school."
Beru smiled. Luke had acquired Owen's scepticism towards authorities, along with his innate 'mother-wit'—that was what Tatooinians called it, and Beru suspected it was quite literal in Luke's case.
"Oh Luke, you're safer here on Tatooine. You don't want to get mixed up with the Empire, it's too dangerous."
"P'raps I'd be the one to stop them," Luke said softly, blue eyes staring off as if he saw a far horizon, his face suddenly transparent and visionary. Beru shivered as though she too had been touched by prescience; she could not tell Luke, who thought his father was a dead navigator on a spice freighter, why the Empire was dangerous specifically to him. To Luke Skywalker, son of a Jedi, born with that latent power, the blessing and curse combined that blazed out like a diamond in the desert. The danger, the gift, flickering intermittently like lightening along the edge of a sandstorm, that Luke bore. Padmé's anxious face, haunted by sorrow, ghosts walking behind her dark eyes, floated before Luke's vision for a moment. Emperor Palpatine...Lord of the Sith...Vader...the words, heavy with fear, swirled darkly in her memory. Dead or worse, would be Luke's fate if the Emperor got his hands on the child, Padmé had said. She had had no words for worse, but it stalked Beru's nightmares.
She reached for her boy, grasping his shoulders, hugging him as though she could guard him with her body. Luke returned the embrace briefly, then squirmed away, boy-fashion, to climb up the steps and out the door.
Owen was checking the electron fence, outside, before shutting down the power. Beru emerged from the archway, shading her eyes from the flushed, near-horizontal beams of the suns.
Luke was standing at the edge of the sunk courtyard, staring up at the faint stars, slim figure and blond head outlined against the dusty sunset, light outlining his shirt and hair.
Skywalker...It was a common enough form of name on Tatooine, like Whitesun, Darklighter, Fardreamer, half a hundred others, but Beru wondered at the quirk of chance that had given the name to this son of Tatooine's harsh suns, who was so restlessly eager to shake its sand from his wings, perched there at the fall of the ground, as though ready to soar skywards. But could you leave Tatooine wholly behind? Was there not something that Luke needed, that he would carry with him all his life?
A light streaked across the zenith, leaving a bright trail as some fragment of star burned in the atmosphere.
"Shooting star!" Luke called to Owen, pointing upwards—he was still young enough to see the wonder, to want to share his delight. Owen grunted assent to his nephew's eager cry, coming over to lay a hand on Beru's shoulder.
"My grandmother used to say they were souls leaving their bodies as they died," she said.
"They're lumps of rock burning up in the atmosphere," Owen said, half-amused.
"I know, but I can't help getting a shiver when I see one."
Owen looked back towards Luke.
"It's a bad idea," he said, as though that followed naturally on from the rest of the conversation.
"He won't stay here forever, Owen. One way or another, it had to happen."
If he didn't leave of his own accord, Ben Kenobi would come for him. Owen couldn't keep the wizard—the Jedi—away forever, no matter if he thought he could.
"But the Imperial Academy, right under their nose! Beru—"
"At least the Empire doesn't know Luke Skywalker exists. He's our son as far as they're concerned."
"How long do you think it would stay that way? The boy's got a mouth the size of a meteor crater! And though he's not Ani's living spit, he's too much like him in other ways—"
Owen broke off, making a face. Beru mentally translated 'other ways' to 'damn Jedi powers' and shook her head.
Though, as a child, Luke could have been the blond-haired little boy in Shmi's blurred holo—on the day of Anakin's winning podrace, the only one she possessed—he was growing up more like his mother in his features and build. But he had inherited other traits from Anakin Skywalker—his impatience, his stubbornness, his dreams, the sudden hot flare of his temper. And the Force.
Beru sighed, the problem seeming unsolvable. All she knew was that she loved Luke, that she would lay down her life for him.
"Maybe we can afford a T-16 after all—if the harvest turns out well—it's not like he doesn't work, when he puts his mind to it, and he will be done with that school soon..." Owen mused.
Beru smiled at this practical, if somewhat stopgap, measure on Owen's part. She knew that though her husband loved Luke, he would never indulge the boy for less than pragmatic reasons. She imagined Luke's delighted reaction when he was told he could have the coveted Skyhopper. It would certainly be another way to get himself into trouble, but it would be enough of an outlet for Luke's overabundant energies to put off any talk of the Academy for a long while yet.
"Luke! Lu-uke! Bedtime!" Beru called, and her boy came running across the sand to her.