Tears slowed, and finally subsided. Luke came back from the world of misery to reality. Luke was aware of cool tiles against his legs, dampness on his face. He scrubbed them away.
Such weakness. He wasn't a toddler anymore. Why did he allowed himself to cry like one? Boys don't cry. Men don't cry. Strong. He had to be strong.
"Perhaps we should get ourselves clean up." Obi-Wan. In the gloom, silver moonlight from the ventilation slit painted his face sallow. Shadows catched in every creases, every wrinkles. He looked so old, so defeated. The dim lighting was just enough for Luke to catch the twin wet trails on his cheeks.
Luke himself didn't looked much better. His reflection in the wall-mounted mirror sniffled along with him, eyes puffy, face blotchy.
"Yeah, Alright."
Dry rain of sonic dripped from the shower, effective and dutiful as always.
Is there such a thing to clean one's soul? Obi-Wan couldn't help wonder. If there was, he was in dire need of it.
What had he done? The beast was supposed to be contained, its claws and bites inflicted only upon himself and no one else.
He switched off the shower. The hum that filled the air dissipated.
Better question yet: What should he do?
"Why?" Luke's golden hair glinted, an angel's halo framing his face, which Obi-Wan could not see. For Luke turned outward, beyond the oval pane of glass that seperated the home from the desert, to a stray bantha wandering about without a goal, without care for the world. "Why do this to yourself?
Why indeed.
A deep roar of a Krayt dragon, one from the depth of Jundland Wastes, jolted the bantha. It darted wild, almost crashed into the nearby vaporator. The hairy hide propelled it forward, its simple mind cloudy with fear.
"See the bantha. It runs away from danger." Obi-Wan shifted to the left to get the better view of the creature. "Ah, what it perceives to be." Closer, Obi-Wan detected an annoyed frown in the reflective surface. Just get to the point.
"It stops," Luke said.
The bantha stood in its place, breathing heavily from exertion.
Obi-Wan rubbed his beard. "Why?"
Luke's lips thinned. "It realises the danger is not real."
Obi-Wan hummed. "But when danger originates from the mind itself, nothing tells it to stop."
The bantha continued on its pathless path. Its slow gait carried it toward the unknown.
"The mind becomes its worst enemy. And the body..." A long pause. "It does what it takes to survive. The physical pain is easier to bear than the mental one." I paid the price to survive.
"And you do just that. You're not living anymore. You're just surviving." Luke pressed his forehead to the cool surface. It bore a scent of glass cleaner.
"Yes. I have a good reason to survive. But the reason to live..." The chair creaked as Obi-Wan leant forward. "I have none."
"Find one then!" Luke growled at a small row of potted cacti. It was a wonder that spiny plants didn't wilt.
"I can't. I'm too far gone. I have let it live inside me for too long. It is a part of me. It becomes me. I don't know what I am without it," Obi-Wan answered.
"You're afraid to change."
"I am."
"You don't have to be. I have faith in you," Luke faced Obi-Wan. To let him see the truth in his eyes. Believe me.
Oh, Luke. Your heart is in the right place. Don't concern yourself with a lost cause like me. A flicker of fire ignited in the cavern of his heart. The tip of ice stalactite began to thaw and drip. But how long could it stand in the storm? "I will be alright, I promise. I know what I am doing." I think I do. "I will be alive, as long as you need me to be."
A single sun in the sky. It would be half an hour at most before its twin joined for the journey across the sky.
What would my life be like without Obi-Wan? A curious question. Obi-Wan had been the bedrock of his life for as long as he could remember.
For the answer...
The Force was threads of life woven into a tapestry. The whole picture was too complex for any mind to comprehend. It binded worlds together. The thick thread of what is intertwined with the fader one of what was and millions spider silks of what might be.
Luke seeked for the most elusive of all: what could have been. The invisible thread didn't even belong to this universe. It belonged to other realm of time and space that shared the same past, present, or future. Please let me see.
Suns. Vaporators. Homestead. His aunt and uncle. Stars. The dream of touching every one of them, to be the starpilot like his father. Droids. An old hermit on the edge of the Western Dune Sea.
The force allowed him that much before jerking him back to the thread he belonged to. The present.
Hello, Luke Skywalker, he thought to himself in other life. Nice to meet you.
The second sun was a sphere of orange fire at the horizon, ready to chase its twin across the sky. It rose along with heat. Small dampness danced across his forehead. It wouldn't be too long before temperature became unbearable and his skin got a nice red sunburn.
Better hurry. The suns wait for no one.
Water yield was a lot lower than it should be, five percent more than before he changed the battery.
Green lights blinked him from the control panel signalling everything to be working fine. The cooling unit was set to optimal temperature. Solar cell wires were intact. New batteries were in their prime condition.
"What's your problem, huh?" He asked the troublesome machine.
It didn't reply, of course. Its binary brain didn't understand Basic.
A manual check later and Luke still couldn't identify the problematic part. He slided the mini toolkit back to his worn belt. He would discuss this to Obi-Wan, but he doubted they would found the solution. He would have to bring a droid with him tomorrow.
Frustration built at the thought. Bantha fucker. Worn boots grinded down hard at some poor squishy mushroom, leaving a gritty mush and some thick white stems.
"What a waste. You could make stew with them. They don't taste too bad."
"Really? What are you? Mushroom god?" his mouth lashed out before he noticed that he was supposed to be alone. Oh dear. He had heard that being alone in the desert could drive people insane. Hearing voice, seeing things, these were the first signs.
No. No. No. he refused to think that it would happen to him. It was just a tale to keep children from wandering out alone.
A laughter, deep and rumbly. "No, just a friendly passerby. Have a problem with your vap?"
"A trespa-" Luke's eyes widened, refused to believe the sight before him. He rubbed his eye and squinted. This is not good. Not good at all.
It was a man, alright. He was tall, a head taller than himself, with a roguish scar on his right eye that would have made him intimidating but for the crooked grin he wore.
Thanks, brain. You forget to mention that he was blue.
Blue and translucent. A lifesize holovid. Except there was no holonet signal here in the middle of nowhere, and no holoprojector.
Okay. Maybe I'm insane, just a little.
The blue stranger frowned. "Hey, you alright? You look a bit pale here."
"And you look a bit blue."
The man blinked at Luke's response then gave him a cocky smirk. "Oh, true."
Luke studied the man, a bit disturbed that he could see the world through the man like a stained glass. "Who-what are you?"
The blue man chewed the inside of his cheek "That's a difficult question. I am not entirely sure of that myself." He shrugged, his smirk returned. "A humble vaporator god, maybe. Fixing his believers' vap for free."
"Are you joking?"
"Partly." The man already turned to the vaporator, he walked-or should he say glided?-around its cylindrical body. "A GX-8. What's wrong with it?"
Oh, I'm really getting crazy, too stressed out over Obi-Wan. "Dunno. Just changed night batteries, old ones are like decades old. But that doesn't seem to work so far."
"Let's see." The man patted the metal casing, humming as he kneeled down before the control panel to get a better sight.
Luke mentally huffed in annoyance that the man had to kneel, when it was in perfect height for himself. I will be tall. One day, just not today.
Same green blinking lights. "See? I can't find out what's wrong with it," Luke said.
The blue man pulled open an input unit and keyed in a long string of zeros and ones.
He knows binary. Impressive.
And he typed down some more commands before grinning like a loth cat. "You tell me what's wrong."
It was last night's stat, showing water yield, wind direction, temperature. Those only echoed what Luke already knew. The water yield was unreasonably low even if the core was working fine. "The vap works fine but somehow water is not extracted from the air at night."
The man shook his head. "That's not it. See this?" He pointed at the core temp, 18.3 degree celcius, and then to outdoor temp, 18.6.
Luke visualised a glass of iced water in midday heat and tiny beads that would soon pooled around the bottom of the glass. The basic mechanism of a vaporator. "It needs the difference in temperature," he answered with a snap of his finger.
"Correct. You have to lower the core temp at night."
"Wow. That's easier to fix than I thought." Luke said.
The blue man nodded. "Everything is, once you know what's wrong with it."
The suns were almost on the zenith, blazing everything under their eyes to black ashes. Blistering heat started to burn Luke's skin. And Obi-Wan was probably waiting…
"I've got to go. I'm Luke Kenobi, by the way. What should I call you?"