Flipping Coins

Flip Two

The twin suns of Tatooine blazed hotly over the arid desert lands, both of them an angry red as they began to descend from their zenith. All creatures took cover from the miserable heat, eagerly anticipating the cooler dusk hours. To one child, though, the suns had ceased to exist; to Luke Skywalker, nothing existed outside the small garage that he and the two droids were in. His world had shrunk to such a small place, and yet to him it was the best place to be. Ignoring the sand-swept walls and the tables full of spare, disassembled machine parts, ignoring the oil stains and the hopeless dreams that clung to the room, Luke stared dumbly at C3P0 as something surged within him. Tatooine was a bleak and crushing planet, but it could not defeat Luke's joy this time.

His father, he though excitedly, these droids had known his father!

"You really do look quite like him," Threepio told the young boy animatedly, "particularly when he was assembling me."

"Were you with him for a long time?" Luke asked, to which Artoo hummed an agreement. "Could you tell me about him, then? I never knew my father."

An eerie silence followed that statement, which the droids quickly attempted to fill, but something about it had felt wrong. Luke didn't meet new people very often, but whenever he told someone that he'd never known his parents they always wanted to know why, or at least offered him their sympathy. The droids had done neither, as if they'd known his father was dead. Had they been there when—

Luke shook the thought away. Even if they had, he didn't want to know of his father's death; he had a chance now to learn of how the man had lived, and that was all he'd ever wanted.

"He was exceedingly talented," Threepio broke through Luke's momentary haze, "and quite adventurous." He paused, then made an exasperated sound. "I'm making a mess of this, aren't I? I'm no good at telling stories, sir."

"No, please," Luke begged, "don't stop! I don't care what you tell me—just tell me something, anything. I know so little about my father," he finished sadly.

Threepio turned to regard his mechanical companion. Artoo wheeled back and forth a few times, almost nervously, his head swiveling as he let out a barrage of forceful little beeps and whistles.

"Very well," Threepio relented, turning back to the young boy. "Artoo will tell the story, as he knows more of it in any case, and I shall translate."

"Thank you," Luke breathed quietly, so relieved that he barely spared a glance at the workbench he hoisted himself onto. Then, his legs swinging over the edge of the table, he listened intently as the blue astromech droid began to let loose a small symphony of chirps and hums.

"Our story begins," Threepio translated after a few moments, "in a curious little junkshop not far from here, in a place called Mos Espa."

Vader could only recall having been to the city of Mos Eisley twice in his life, and he still hated it on sight. Creatures of all size, description, and levels of sentience scurried about the busy spaceport—hocking wares, escaping the heat in shady cantinas, searching for transports, looking to waste a few hours or perhaps a lifetime—the city was buzzing with activity. It reminded him eerily of Mos Espa; all it needed was a greedy Toydarian and a blond haired slave, and it would become a new level of hell for him.

As he'd stepped off his personal shuttle, for once blessedly free from bumbling officers and scared troopers, he had hesitated for a moment. Tatooine was a bittersweet world for him; memories of his mother pricked too closely to the surface, reminding him of everything he'd lost over the years. And yet it was here that he'd met Padmé, here that he had learned to build and to race, here that he had met Qui-Gon. Master Qui-Gon Jinn had been the closet thing to a father Anakin had ever know, no matter how short their acquaintance had been. He couldn't help but wonder how different his life might have turned out if Qui-Gon had survived his encounter with the Sith. Not that Obi-Wan had been terrible to the young Anakin, but he hadn't really been fatherly either. They'd gotten to know each other in a dark period, thrown together like young orphans in their grief for the late Master Jinn.

Obi-Wan! Vader seized on that thought, used it to drag himself from the past. Obi-Wan was why he had pushed through his hesitation. He'd felt the searching touch of his former master's mind not long ago—and he'd been immediately haunted by curiosity. What was Kenobi doing on Tatooine? It wasn't a particularly good hiding place, in all honesty; true, Vader would have never come here voluntarily, but there were other places that he wouldn't have been likely to go, places that Kenobi had definitely known better. Did this have anything to do with the joy he'd felt shrieking through the Force earlier? Was it possible that Kenobi had found that Force-sensitive and was, even now, training a new Jedi? It was an unsettling thought; he barely knew what he would do when faced with Obi-Wan once more, let alone the man's half-trained apprentice.

An uneasy feeling latched around Vader's heart, like he was standing at the edge of a cliff and was about to throw himself into the abyss. No, he shook himself; he was just being fanciful, if he could ever truly use that word to describe himself. Things were simple: he was on a mission. He would confront Kenobi in whatever way he had to, satisfy his curiosity about the overly jubilant Force-sensitive, find the droids, and get away from this blasted hunk of space-grit as fast as possible. It was a short, concise chain of events.

And he had a horrible suspicion that none of it was going to go according to plan.

"Are you sure he was a slave?" Luke asked for what felt like the tenth time.

"Oh yes," Threepio confirmed, "quite sure."

The young boy frowned. "Uncle Owen never said anything about that." Granted, that wasn't the sort of thing you really told a nine year old about his father.

"Well, your uncle never knew him as a slave," Threepio gave a stiff, jerking shrug, "but that's getting ahead of the story."

Luke stared off into nothingness, his mind already whirling with what he had learned. His father had been a slave, true, but he'd also been a mechanic—like Luke!—and a podracer, which was beyond amazing in his mind. He'd always wanted to try his hand at racing, to reach that nearly sacred state of being where a pilot practically became one with his ship, but Aunt Beru had said he wasn't allowed to fly the family speeder for another year at least. It seemed strange, somehow, that even as a slave Anakin had had more opportunities to live than his son was being given.

"Your father won his freedom in a podrace," Threepio continued over his thoughts, "and he was taken off Tatooine by the Jedi. Sadly, this is the point where I leave the story for quite a number of years."

"So the Jedi took him in?" Luke questioned. He had dreamt many things about his father throughout his lonely childhood, but he had never imagined that.

"Yes," Threepio nodded while Artoo whistled. "After Master Jinn died—which was quite a tragedy, I'm told—your father became the apprentice of Obi-Wan Kenobi."

"Kenobi?" Luke frowned, drawing his legs up onto the workbench.

"Do you know him, sir?" the droid asked.

"No," Luke shook his head, "but I've heard of a Ben Kenobi before; maybe they're related."

Obi-Wan was in a mild state of panic. A few years ago that would have earned him a jab to the knees by Master Yoda but, unfortunately, no one was around to snap him out of it this time.

Vader was on the planet; he could feel that just as clearly as he knew Vader could feel him. He also knew that the Sith Lord had felt Luke, and would be curious about that Force-sensitive mind. The only thing that was separating the man from his son were a few short miles, and if those miles were bridged then the Jedi's plan to save the galaxy would come tumbling down like a house of cards. His only hope was to make it to the Lars' homestead before Vader found him.

And then what? Even if he managed to find Luke before fate closed in around the both of them, he wouldn't have enough time to hide boy; Vader was too close.

It was at times like this that Obi-Wan wished he had been less of a hermit; he had a swoop bike, of course, for the rare occasions that he went into a town for a few supplies, but it was a rickety old thing that had trouble keeping a constant speed. Before, he'd had doubts that it would last out the year, now he had doubts that it would even last his daredevil race to the Lars' homestead. It wasn't as if he had any other options, however. So, with an uneasy feeling ringing down to his very toes, Obi-Wan mounted his bike and set off across the Jundland Wastes.

"So my father was really a Jedi?" Luke interrupted the droids' story once more. His uncle had long told him that his father had been a navigator, but he had never particularly believed that. It hadn't felt right. Still, out of all the fantastic things he'd dreamt of his father doing, becoming a Jedi hadn't been one of them.

"Yes," Threepio nodded. "Though I'm given to understand that the Jedi Council was initially against it."

Luke frowned. "Why?"

"I'm afraid I don't know, sir," the droid answered. "The Jedi are terribly mysterious, and it is not often clear why they do the things they do until long after the fact. They're perfectly illogical creatures, if you ask me."

Artoo beeped and hummed a little, almost sadly, though Luke had no idea what he was saying.

"Shall I continue?" Threepio asked after a weighty pause.

"I have another question," the young boy said hesitantly. "Why does Padmé keep returning to the story?"

Threepio didn't seem surprised by the question, although it was hard tell since he had no facial expressions. "She was important to Anakin," he answered.

Something heavy settled around Luke's heart. "She was my mother, wasn't she?" He already knew the answer, but if living with the Lars family had taught him only one thing it was that he had to ask, because people were disturbed when he knew the answers before he'd voiced the question.

Neither droid answered, but their silence was all the confirmation he needed.

He'd never wondered much about his mother before but now, after learning a tiny bit about her, he was insatiably curious. And to think, he'd been so worried that his friends would make fun of his family, when all along his mother had been a queen! A sudden thought popped into his head. "Does that make me a prince?"

The protocol droid seemed flustered for a moment. "I don't think so," he finally answered. "Your mother was elected to be the Queen of Naboo, and was a Senator when you were born."

Son of a queen or son of a Senator, it didn't really matter; it was still heady stuff to a nine year old. "Man, my parents were awesome!" Luke burst out in amazement. "My father was a Jedi and my mother was a queen! I wonder why my aunt and uncle never told me any of this?"

His life was changing, bit-by-bit. He was still Luke the orphan, but now he was the orphan of Important People. His parents had been adventurous explorers, which explained his own lust for action. He wanted to see things beyond the moisture farm, to soar among the stars like his parents had before him.

Vader had met him about halfway through the Dune Sea, and what should have been an honorable duel between rivals had devolved into a drag race, because Obi-Wan had refused to get off his bike. Of course, Vader had the superior piloting skills, but Obi-Wan's erratic vehicle had kept both of them on their toes. The Sith had tried multiple times to cut the older man off, but the bike had always slowed down or sped up at just the right moment, forcing Vader to veer away. After a while, Vader had obviously grown frustrated, ramming his speeder into Obi-Wan.

Now they were locked in a lightsaber duel, and Obi-Wan couldn't help but feel that neither of them really had their hearts in it. It was all so perfunctory—a parry here, a thrust there, neither one of them landing any hits or gaining any ground. The fight was approaching a farce, they were both so distracted.

"Why are we doing this?" Obi-Wan asked over the spitting hiss of the two colliding blades.

"It is expected of us, is it not?" Vader mocked quietly. "The noble Jedi must fight the evil Sith."

"True," Obi-wan conceded. "But I'm not entirely noble and you aren't entirely evil, so why are we doing this?"

Vader swung his saber in a wide arc. "Why would say I'm not entirely evil?"

Obi-Wan almost smiled at the fact that the younger man didn't contest Kenobi calling himself less than noble. "Your mind is too divided, too unfocused. How can you hope to be purely one thing or another if you can't even keep your thoughts uniform?"

Vader extinguished his blade with a frustrated sigh. "I have long plotted my revenge against you, Kenobi, but now that the moment is here I fear it will only leave me feeling…"

"Guilty?" Obi-Wan offered, tentatively extinguishing his own blade.

Vader shook his head. "Hollow," he replied, as though there were much of a difference. "I sense something else at work here; the Force has been peculiarly active on Tatooine today."

Obi-Wan shifted nervously, but remained silent. And, though it was impossible to tell through the face mask, he got the distinct impression that the younger man's eyes were now narrowed on him in calculation.

"You're harboring a Force-sensitive here," Vader accused hotly.

Kenobi denied it instantly. "No, I'm not."

"You're lying," Vader almost sounded incredulous at that.

"Of course I am," Obi-Wan replied plainly. "How else do you expect me to respond to that statement?"

Vader growled lowly, not at all amused by the Jedi's patronizing attitude. "I will find the child," he warned.

"And do what?" Obi-Wan asked, hiding his fear at the very thought. "You couldn't even bring yourself to fight me—someone you hate. I doubt very much that you could bring yourself to slaughter this unknown child. Besides," he added, turning to the smoldering wreckage of their vehicles, "you destroyed the only transportation out in these wastes."

Vader seemed to stare at the twisted machines for a long time, and Obi-Wan was certain he could almost here the mental cursing that was going on behind the younger man's expressionless mask.

"Well, I hope you're satisfied with your revenge," Kenobi taunted him further. It wasn't a very Jedi-like thing to do, but if he could force Vader's focus away from Luke, then it was worth it.

"Yes, I've always wanted to be stranded in the Dune Sea with a man who is as likely to lecture me as the suns are to continue rising and setting," Vader huffed quietly.

Obi-Wan stared at him oddly, momentarily forgetting the urgency of the situation. Even coming out of the deep bass vocoder, that statement had sounded so much like Anakin. It was eerie, really.

The Dark Lord of the Sith turned to the older man fully. "That was sarcasm," he offered after a pause.

"Yes, I'd gathered that," Obi-Wan replied bemusedly. And, despite everything—all the years of uncertainty and torment—he felt as though he had suddenly been thrust back in time, on another madcap adventure with the impetuous Chosen One.

Luke knew his mouth was hanging open, but he couldn't help it. "Count Dooku cut off his arm?!" he asked shrilly, darting an incredulous look between the two droids.

"Yes," Threepio confirmed while Artoo swiveled his dome-shaped head, "and prosthetics weren't nearly as advanced then as they are now, so he had an arm made entirely of metal for a while."

Luke stared disbelievingly at his own arm, trying to imagine what it would be like if it were gone. Of course, a prosthetic could make a person fully functional once more, but he had a feeling that he would be hyperaware of it. Prosthetics had gotten to the point were most people couldn't tell the difference between machine and flesh, but he would always know. If Luke lost his arm, he knew he would feel where the machine attached to his flesh, would feel the difference between his body and some foreign part.

How awful that must have been for his father!

Darth Vader had often found himself irretrievably bored over the past nine years. Of course, he got his kicks in where he could. Once, he'd altered the sound pattern of his respirator just to mess with his crew, but had stopped before long as it had made him somewhat lightheaded. It had really been more depressing than it had been amusing.

That was rather how he felt at the moment: bored and frustrated. He was supposed to have exacted his well-earned revenge, and instead he found himself trudging through the blazing desert sands with the very man he should have killed. But he hadn't found the strength to do it; his hatred had been oddly elusive. Even looking at Obi-Wan now, it was hard not to think of the man as his master; a bastard, certainly, but still his master. There were a few extra gray hairs, and he seemed a little more tanned, but Kenobi was largely unchanged. It brought back memories, good and bad, and that made it all the harder to rally against the older man.

He was suffering from a peculiar and completely unwarranted case of compassion.

"You are oddly silent, Darth," Obi-Wan said suddenly, keeping pace beside the younger man as they both wandered aimlessly through the desert.

"My apologies," Vader replied mockingly. "Obviously, we should be comparing lightsaber techniques, perhaps even exchanging tailors." He snorted, which was a decidedly strange sound coming out of the mask. "Afraid that the heat will drive you crazy, old man?"

Obi-Wan sighed. "Well, you're certainly still as sarcastic as always."

Vader shook his head. "You know, I'm more or less the same person I was before, which is kind of a let down."

"What about Mustafar?" Obi-Wan frowned.

"I plead insanity," Vader shrugged. "Angry, angry insanity." He sighed heavily when the old man continued to regard him strangely. "Palpatine knew how to play me; he knew what I wanted and how to promise it to me without actually delivering any results. I fell fast and hard, and I did terrible things. He blinded me to the truth until it was too late."

"And what truth was that?" Obi-Wan asked curiously.

"That giving in to my hatred only makes me an angry person," Vader replied quietly. "There might be power in the Dark Side, but there is no peace."

Obi-Wan snorted. "Peace is very much out of your character. Do you even want it?"

"Wouldn't you?" the younger man snapped. "Everything I sought to protect is gone; I have nothing now but my own disquiet. That's a barren life, Kenobi, and if it continues there will be nothing left of me." And the hardest part of that statement was that he couldn't figure out if he meant nothing left of him emotionally, or nothing left of Anakin.

Kenobi's sage-like eyes cut into him, seeing more than just the physical world. "Do you fear the bleakness of your future?"

Vader shook his head. "I resent it."

A half-smile quirked the Jedi's lips, and a scheme began to shine through his eyes. "Do you still despise me?" he asked carefully.

"What are you playing at, old man?" Vader countered suspiciously. Obi-Wan was a tricky man, and not to be approached without caution; one of Obi-Wan's schemes was doubly deadly, and not to be approached at all. Still, aside from finding those two droids, it wasn't as though he had anything else to do at the moment.

"Well," Kenobi's smile widened, "there's one thing that betrayal can teach us better than anything else ever could."

"And what's that?" Vader asked, feeling as though he were walking headlong into a trap.

"How to forgive," Obi-Wan replied gently.

Vader's denial was immediate, "No."

"Why not?" Kenobi countered seriously. "You betrayed the Order and I betrayed you; we're dubiously even." He shrugged. "Now we have a mutual goal in common—the death of the Empire—so what's to stop us from combining our strength?"

"I refuse to beg my former master for help," Vader hissed. Although, some part of him conceded, it wasn't a terrible idea. He and Obi-Wan had fought well together during the Clone Wars, they had never lacked for excitement, and it wasn't as though he hadn't been planning to overthrow the Empire anyway.

"Pride is not the way of the Jedi," Obi-Wan countered, almost immediately falling into his old mentoring habits.

Vader almost laughed. "Neither is becoming a Sith, and yet…"

Kenobi's smile took on a familiar edge. "There is much darkness in you Anakin Skywalker, but a Sith you are not."

"But," Vader stopped in his tracks, at a suddenly loss. "I gave in to my hatred." If he wasn't a Sith, what was he? "I did horrible things for the Dark Side of the Force." If he wasn't a Sith, how could he atone for the crimes he had committed? "I have a red lightsaber!"

Obi-Wan snorted. "And because these things are true it must follow that you are evil?" he raised an eyebrow. "Yes, you did horrible things. Yes, you trampled roughshod over every decree the Order held sacred-"

Why did he suddenly feel like he was ten years younger, and receiving a lengthy lecture from his master? "Oh no, please, don't hold back on my account," Vader muttered sarcastically.

Obi-Wan ignored him. "-and I'm not even going to bother with how weak of an argument the color of your lightsaber is. My point is that no one is beyond redemption; I'm not saying that you haven't been changed by what you've done, but you have the chance to make amends. Weren't you just saying that you're more or less the same person?"

"Yes…" Vader trailed off uncertainly.

"You were right," Kenobi replied. "I sense something in you that screams Anakin Skywalker, something that no Sith could possibly have."

He wasn't sure he liked where this was going, but curiosity got the better of him. "And what's that?"

Obi-Wan smiled. "Hope."

"Wait," Luke frowned, "I thought you said that Jedi weren't allowed to marry."

"They weren't," Threepio agreed, "but Anakin and Padmé loved each other deeply, so they married in secret."

What did that say about his parents? That they loved each other, certainly, but there was more. For his father it had meant going against the decrees and wishes of the very people he had been so desperately trying to gain approval from; for his mother it had meant willfully ignoring her husband's rule-breaking and lying to everyone about their relationship. It tasted of selfishness on both their parts… but had it been wrong? Luke couldn't deny that without that union, he wouldn't have been around to ponder these thoughts, so it couldn't have been wrong to a fault—and who were the Jedi to regulate relationships anyway? Whatever bad had happened afterward—and he knew there had to be badness, otherwise he wouldn't have been an orphan—it had probably been the Jedi's fault for being so controlling. If he'd learned nothing else from the small school in Anchorhead, it was that the more stifled people felt, the more likely they were to rebel.

His thoughts would have continued that line of pondering, if not for his uncle. "Luke!" Owen's shout was clear, deep, and… frightened? Uncle Owen was never frightened!

But then, rising above his uncle's shouts, above the general hum of activity around the farm, Luke heard something that set his heart pounding. It was a painful, echoing noise, a piecing, screaming howl that carried through the air and set his nerves on edge.

Sandpeople.

A/N: I didn't think it would be a wise move for this story to recap the events of the Prequels step-by-step. That's not really the focus of the story. Obviously, I'm assuming that you've all seen them, or at least know their general plotlines. I don't really care for doing that, but it was necessary for the story to move on.

I have no idea where Mos Espa is in relation to the Lars' homestead. When Threepio says it's "not far from here," I think he's simply speaking from the point of view of someone who has literally traveled light-years across the galaxy.

Please Review!

Disclaimer: The tailor joke was from the Mark Hamill/Star Wars episode of The Muppet Show. Credit for the conversation on betrayal and forgiveness goes to the Jason Webley song, "Ways to Love". And, finally, I do not own anything from the Star Wars universe.