Arriving at home

Dedicated to Lile

Disclaimer: No, I don't own Star Wars and I bet, George Lucas isn't planning on donating it to my for Christmas. Pity.

Lost in his own thoughts, Luke's hand slid over the rough and charred surface of the handrail. When he rose it, it moved to his face like a living being with its own will. His hand was black. When he was still a child, he touched the handrail every day and always had his hands been dirty afterwards. But now, as he saw the ugly smut sticking to it, screaming silently up to him like a bygone cenotaph, this place occurred to him to have been the cleanest and purest place in the whole galaxy, before things started to go wrong. Although aunt Beru often blustered about everything being filthy again.

A silent laugh pressed against his closed lips when she and Owen appeared before him, debating about Luke being necessary in the house or on the fields, where he usually helped out.

In his head, the burned ruins built up to the place they once had been; the place he had happily called "Home" back then. And at the same time he had given everything to escape it and its duties...

"You stay at least one more season!," pacifying but definitely his uncle stepped towards him. "Luke, I need you here. Only this last season."

"Yeah," Luke laughed quietly. "And that was exactly what you told me every season."

"Try to understand." Pleading Owen looked him in the eyes, unwilling to discuss this subject over and over again.

"I know you have to go if you want to grow... Just... Not yet, okay?"

"I know, you only wanted the best for me," Luke sighed slightly amused and stepped forward to give Owen a pat on the back. His foot knocked against a part of the burned-down wall. Before his face Owen, Beru, the furniture, the house vanished... and he found himself in the burned-down ruin, he left at the very beginning of his great adventure.

Before that day came, everything was perfectly fine. He had a monotonous, boring life as an orphan. He grew to a teenager and further and he hadn't changed at all. And then the day came, when he was no more a child, all of a sudden. The day, when Ben Kenobi, an old, spacy codger, vanished forever and the great Jedi-Master Obi-Wan Kenobi filled his shoes. The day, that burned everything he knew and loved into a black pile of rubble in only a few hours.

Strange. If someone had asked him a couple of weeks ago, he would never have believed that he even dared to have such thoughts. But that was maybe because there was simply no space in his mind until the fall of the empire and so the bothersome sadness had to yield to plotting and deciding between right and wrong.

And now that everything was over, the emperor was defeated and his henchmen hunted by the former rebels, the 'great' Luke Skywalker started to worry about un-jedi-like things like the past.

So many years this had been his home... but it had taken only minutes to turn it into the most unsavoury place in the universe. At least for him. But where else was his home now? During the battle between him and his father, he, Leia, Ben and Han travelled through galaxies... Sometimes they stayed a little longer but whenever they tried to settle down, they were traced and had to flee, as they did on Hoth.

And when the battle ended so abrupt and the relief and the joy about the peace were becalmed, suddenly the young jedi didn't know where to return to, any more – because the boy from then, who called Tatooine his home, was gone. Even though his legs had carried him back here. Probably because he did not only have to see it with his own eyes – for that he had done long ago – but also because he had to feel that there was no 'home' for him left.

And he felt nothing.

To stay here would be absurd. There wasn't anything here, except from a lot of sand and a couple of creatures he surely didn't miss.

Luke Skywalker. Liberator of the galaxy, messiah of the rebellion, last jedi-knight and homeless.

With a sigh of self-pity Luke closed his eyes, sat down in the hot desert sand and leaned his back against the black leftovers from what had been the exterior wall of the house in which a farmer had once lived with his wife and his nephew.

Whether Leia felt alike?

After all Alderaan had been destroyed. While he had at least an empty ruin to return to, she had absolutely nothing. Dead space in dead space. But she had the rebels. She coordinated those people and she was needed. Sure – he wouldn't be out of place there, but they had pushed him for taking a rest, after he had managed so much. While Leia was completely absorbed by her new duty.

And Han? Well, Han was at home wherever he could land the falcon.

Luke didn't feel Ben's presence. Strange – somehow that calmed him. At the moment, the ghost would only be disturbing, no matter how much Luke esteemed him, usually. But now he just wanted to think unhurriedly and without presenting himself so selfish and childish. After all he really should be helping with the rebuilding of their new republic and not singing the blues over some past childhood days. But sometimes even a Luke Skywalker needed a downtime.

Home....

Tatooine was beyond all question. For he once noted at he beginning of his journey: There's nothing for him here, now.

Coruscant? - No. The only thing he connected with this planet was the war; even if it was the planet on which the senate soon would be holding meetings again. He didn't think that choice was appropriate anyway.

Naboo... Home of his mother. A beautiful place, too, but what should he be doing there? Nothing.

To Hoth he wouldn't go without a very good reason, either. And not without Han to rescue him, when he was in hot water... or in this case rather frozen water.

No matter how many planets he thought about, none of them sounded even a bit like "home". Of course they were all places, to which he could return, whenever he wanted to, but what 'home' really meant was to wish to return to that place.

In some ways it seemed to be a blessing, if you had to deal with dark jedi and the apprenticeship to encounter just those – at least you didn't have to think about the little ungratefulness, life was showing you once more. About places that didn't exist any more and about those, which had changed so much that you couldn't recognize them as those you liked to remember.

Everywhere in this universe he was a stranger. He had to start new, just like the republic. Find a new home.

Before he got up, he said farewell by waving his fingers through the dry sands, lifted a hand and let the sand fall to the ground again with a pleasant, gentle rustle. And there they were already.....

"Luke!" Leias voice broke the silence that had corroded Luke's soul from the desert, since the airy memory of Owen and Beru had disappeared. With hasty steps the expectant mother and senator of the new republic came running towards him – followed by her husband and Luke's best friend who was once ill-reputed as a smuggler and crook from Corellia throughout the rambling lanes of the empire.

"We looked for you everywhere!" Relieved she sat next to him in the sand and snuggled her brother. "When we said, you should get some rest, we didn't mean 'hit the road!' by that."

Luke let out a laugh and patted her back pacifyingly. He would never believe such a thing. He just wanted to return here alone to awaken to what this place meant to him by now.

"You should see, what happens if you are gone all of a sudden," Han said with a wry grin on his lips. Though he was glad to have found Luke – even though he didn't expect Luke to do anything stupid. At least by now... "Even Mon Mothma lapsed into pure brouhaha, and she isn't like that usually. And she..." He pointed to Leia and rolled his eyes instead of bringing his sentence to an end. "I'm very glad you turned out to be her brother, otherwise I'd really have to become jealous of you."

"Oh, that blowhard!," Leia snorted and flashed an indignant glance to Han. "As if he hadn't been twice as headless as me."

For Luke there was nothing else for it but to shake his head laughing. Overcautious he moved Leia from his shoulder quite paying attention not to hurt her jelly in any way, and stood up. "How did you find me?"

Han pointed to his wife.

"I felt you," she answered and let him help her to get up. "That's also the way I knew that nothing happened to you. Nevertheless I was really concerned... What did you do all the time?"

Luke looked from Leia's eyes to Han and back to his sister. And suddenly he knew what he had done all the time.

"I have taken a long detour," he answered arcanely. "But just now I finally arrived at home."

This was a story I wrote for christmas for a friend. And actually it's a german story, I just tried to translate it into english – normally I do it only the other way round, so let me know whether my english is coherent or if I should rather keep publishing in german, the next times? For I have plenty of those short stories left.