A/N: "Into the West" was the background music for this one.
It's been a long time he thinks as the speeder pulls away, the occupants waving as they drive back to the spaceport, back to their ship, back to the stars and their duties.
And it has been. Most of his childhood was spent here; most of his adulthood, among the stars. He hasn't truly been back since he first left, always rushing around on a quest. Always another princess to save, always another wrong to be put right in a galaxy that never stopped asking for more.
But for now, he doesn't dwell on it. Time enough for that later and the suns are rising, bringing the scorching heat he remembers all too well. The old hut is still standing, but that's about it. Sand has slowly attempted to reclaim it, burying one wall almost completely, the glassy grains spilling in through the open window. Anything of value is long gone – various scavengers, sentient or otherwise, have picked it clean. But the structure is still sound. And he doesn't plan to be here all that long.
Just long enough.
A shovel and broom are among the tools they left with him, but first he sets up the small vaporator. True, he could have brought water with him, but something had stopped him when it was offered. Something he couldn't name. That something is with him now as his hands and tools remember what his mind doesn't quite recall, setting dials and tightening bolts and once, even, giving a loose filter that precisely aimed hit with the end of the 'spanner. Not so hard it breaks, but not so gently that it doesn't click into place. He can almost feel big hands around his, showing him exactly how to fix that stubborn filter.
Out of habit, he starts to push the memory aside, to focus on the task at hand, but stops. That's really why he's here, after all. This desert is a place of memories, good and bad, and memories are what he needs. Memories, and time to sort through them. Too much happened too fast, and he's still reeling.
High time to stop solving the galaxy's problems and start solving some of his own.
The vaporator finished for the moment, he starts to tackle the drift of sand in the main room. It doesn't take as long as he thought it would to move the worst of it back outside to mix with the rest of the small dune out back, and he switches to the broom, sweeping back and forth with even, gentle strokes. Don't sweep so hard, a voice from memory chides. It'll end up everywhere!
He smiles slightly at that. Even if she wasn't his mother, she always treated him like a son. Only now, grown with a child of his own, did he understand how much they had given up for him. A moisture farmer never made much, and another mouth for a young couple to feed could never have been easy. But they had sacrificed much more than that. He'd seen the recording, of that day which changed everything. They'd refused to say anything that could have put him in danger. And it cost them their lives.
He wishes he could have thanked them, for that. Wonders if they know what he became, who he grew up to be in the end. Wonders if they would be proud of what he's done over the years. He's pretty sure they would be.
Though his uncle would still probably complain about his idealistic crusades. The thought makes him chuckle.
Excavated at last, the room is almost as he remembers, rough walls and floor visible once more. But it's missing something, and he's not sure what. He saw it first as a boy dreaming of the stars, then as a not-quite man, struggling to reconcile dreams and truths. He's a man in his own right, now. Older, wiser, more tired.
Maybe it's just that the room seemed bigger back then, more mysterious, the abode of an old man no one knew anything about. With a start he realizes he's probably the age of the old Knight who had sat across from him then, talking of distant conflicts and the Force.
It's a strange thought.
The heat bakes into his skin as the suns rise higher and he moves the few items he'll need into the small house. It's not much – a few spare tunics, some food, a datapad, a few other amenities – but it's more than he left here with. It feels like a lifetime ago, and in a sense, it is. He's not that bright-eyed farm kid anymore. He's seen too much now to get that innocence back. Most days, he can't even see it in his son, who's close to the age he was when he left this planet for the first time. It makes him regret his choices, sometimes, that his son had to grow up so fast. All of their children had. And it was with old eyes that Ben had pushed him to take some time alone, to rest after that last terrible struggle. Anywhere you want to go, they'd said. He thinks they were expecting him to go to a garden world like Naboo, or just to fly around the galaxy for a while.
A garden world Tatooine may have been in some distant past, but it's definitely not one now.
He's lived on spaceships and other worlds for much longer than he lived on this rock. Even swore up and down that he never wanted to come back. And yet, when he had the chance to disappear from the public eye for a while, he returned. He's not sure why – there's nothing more here than there was when he left; a lot less, really. The kids he grew up with have scattered, some to the stars, some to other cities, some to early graves. The old homestead is gone, buried deep beneath the sands. He doesn't have any family here, no long-lost relatives to welcome him, not even a crazy old hermit Jedi to visit.
Not that he'd mind if the Force ghost put in an appearance.
No, it was the place itself that had called to him. The desolation of the desert, the sweeping dunes, even the ever-present sand – these are things he knows to the depths of his being. They're a part of him in a way that the farm boy had never understood.
The Jedi Knight, however, understands. It took years, it took loss, it took the redefining of everything he knew, but in the end, he understands. Everything else may have been turned on its head, but the desert is still here. Different patterns of sand, maybe, different people eking out a harsh living. But the same stillness. The same vastness.
Constant, even as it changed.
There's a lesson in that. Maybe even the same one that old Kenobi had tried to teach him.
Noon comes and goes as the last of the tasks for the day are completed. Rooms cleaned, belongings unpacked, power restored to the old grid so he could recharge the comlink. A minor miracle, that, given the damage the sand had done to the old generator. He mediates for a while in the afternoon, aimlessly floating in the currents of the Force, lingering on memories good and bad. By sunset, the vaporator has produced a few cups of sandy, silty water that tastes better than the pure water he's become accustomed to over the years.
As he stands outside the hut, watching the dual sunset, he remembers a bit of what it was like to be that farmboy, so many years ago, gazing at the same suns and dreaming of adventure. Before he rescued a princess and shouldered the problems of a galaxy. Here, now, that burden set aside, he feels lighter, freer, more connected to the Force than he has since…since longer than he can remember. Maybe even since those first days of training on a swamp world, learning to feel the Force for the first time.
As he heads in for the night, he realized that for the first time in years he really feels warm, all the way to his bones, the chill of space fleeing before the dual suns. It feels good.
It feels like home.