Disclaimer – Lucas owns the characters in this story. He's hidden them away somewhere dark and dusty whilst he's got his mind on episode2, so I snuck in and broke them out for a quick jaunt in the sunshine. I wish I was making money from them, but unfortunately it's all in the name of 'fun'.

Setting – Eight years post Episode Three.

Note: this is an old, old story which isn't the finest piece I've ever written! I'm only leaving it here for posterity. It was written before the release of AOTC - hence Owen and Beru's background is somewhat different to the canon explanation for their relationship to Luke.

ANAKIN AGAIN?

Episode Four - Relocate

Chapter One

"Anything?"

"No."

Beru hugged her husband in the small room, he was still wearing that frown of his. Ignoring Obi-Wan standing in the corner of the room, he kissed her fiercely on the lips. This felt like old times, running around toting blasters. She'd been a 'mother' so long she'd forgotten what adventure felt like. She'd been right to loathe it.

"Beru, where were you when you lost sight of Luke?" Obi-Wan asked. He had retrieved his long robe – "Haven't been without it in years... can't leave it." – and snuck it over his shoulders, shrouding himself again, hiding the Jedi that had rescued her behind the visage of an old man.

"Down in the market," she said. She pulled the plaits loose from her head, they were dishevelled anyway, and strapped a spare utility belt to her waist. "Blasters?" she asked.

Obi-Wan shook his head. "Sorry."

She shrugged.

Owen stirred. "Beru, have you got any idea where he might have gone?"

"No, I - Kenobi, can't you, you know, do your Force thing?"

He chuckled lightly at the wording, then his expression grew serious and sad. "Vader is in orbit. I can't risk it."

"Oh..."

Nobody said a word for a long time.

"You care deeply for the boy?"

Beru's eyes came up in surprise and she looked at the Jedi. "I...yes I do. It wasn't meant to happen that way."

"You think not?" Again, the arms buried deep in the long sleeves. Beru knew that meant he was in his 'teaching' mode. She wasn't going to let him get too far into that.

"Kenobi, you threw that poor boy into our arms whilst his mother was still warm, and you're going to try lecturing me on love!"

She hadn't meant to be so harsh; he flinched and bowed his head. "It was necessary."

"I know, but that doesn't mean I have to like it." She pointed a finger at him as she strapped a comlink to the belt. "Our instructions were to hide him, bury him. He doesn't exist. Make him a farmer, a nobody. No one said anything about how damned endearing he would be."

"He had to be hidden, and quickly," Obi-Wan protested.

"I suppose that's why his sister is living it up in one of the galaxies finest palaces, huh? When you stuck him here to be a pauper and a nobody?"

"I-"

"Yeah, I seem to remember hearing the 'plain sight' argument before and look where we are now?" She was ranting and she knew it, pent-up frustration making itself known. Obi-Wan stepped further into the light. She cut him off again, suddenly the mild, meek farmer Beru returning to the woman she'd been over a decade ago. "Point is, Kenobi, that child has done nothing wrong other than being born into the wrong blood line. And people are still trying to punish him for it. What doesn't he deserve love? Well, guess what? I love the boy, and Owen does too, if he'd ever admit it. It was impossible not to, and you know it."

She glared and moved closer, fixing him with an angry look, then turned on her husband before he could deny it. Strangely, he wasn't even attempting to. "You give him chore after chore, punish him time after time for doing things he doesn't even realise he's doing! He doesn't stand a chance, and he doesn't even know why."

"What kind of 'things'?" Obi-Wan asked quietly, but he was being completely ignored.

"You coddle the boy, Beru. What would you do? Tell him?"

She planted fists on her hips. "No. Treat him like the child he is. He needs love, and comfort, and everything else you needed when you were eight. You treat him like he's a primed thermodetonator that could go off any time."

"Well, he could!"

"He's just a child, Owen."

"Beru is right." Both Lars turned to Kenobi, Beru gaping. "Our own paranoia has brought us here. We we're so scared when that Destroyer hit orbit, we jumped to conclusions that didn't really have any basis, and it's only got us into a deeper mess."

He stepped forward and took Beru's hands, removing them from where they were firmly fixed to her hips, "I never told you not to love the boy. I couldn't expect that, and I would never want that. He deserves better, and, I think from what little I've seen of him," he threw a pointed look at Owen, "that you've done a good job. He's a good boy, and that's all. Just a child. And right now, he needs our help."

He looked down at his booted feet. "As for sending Leia to Alderaan... she doesn't have his potential, and she is female – you can already see Anakin in the boy's frame." He caught a look of despair on Owen's face and turned to him. "No, Owen - I meant only his physical form. The boy has his own mind, his is no reincarnation." He turned back to Beru. "Whatever you're doing, don't stop doing it. You make a wonderful mother, Beru. I always knew you would."

"Do you believe in nature or nurture, Obi-Wan?" she asked, eyes sparkling with unshed tears.

He looked deep into them before answering and she appreciated his contemplation. "I don't know. The Force guides us to a destiny, but it is the person who must take those steps, and that depends on both. We cannot change Luke's genes, but as for his nurture... I think he's pretty well prepared." He smiled kindly and her eyes smiled back.

Her mouth did not; it formed a small frown. "But not if we don't get him back."

---

Luke struggled weakly against the bonds. It didn't help, but he wouldn't let himself give in. Not like the other kids in here. They still hadn't said a word, hadn't moved either. They just sat there, terrified. They didn't even take comfort in each other, completely aloof with one another. Luke was almost angry with them for being so weak. But he wasn't – he knew there had to be a reason for it, and it scared him a lot.

So, this was adventure? He'd gotten what he so dreamed for – excitement, peril, spaceships and blasters. Well, he didn't like it - not at all. It was all pain and confusion and fear. He rested a sore cheek against the cold deck of the ship, feeling utterly helpless. It wasn't a feeling he relished. He wanted the restraints off, he wanted lighting and most of all he wanted off this ship of slavers.

Slavers.

He knew slavery had been outlawed on Tatooine about the same time as podracing had. His mind went back to the small, sleek podracer holed up in the dust and dark of that shed. He'd been so preoccupied by it he'd never even noticed that spacer creep up behind him. He ground his teeth beneath the make-shift gag. Not like he would have been able to fight him anyway, but he would have felt a little better knowing he hadn't been such an idiot.

The cold deck began to vibrate against his cheek in a fast, rhythmic motion that made his ears itch.

The engine.

Well, he'd gotten what he wanted. Looked like he was going for a ride on a space ship.

He bit back tears of desperation as the ship lurched upwards on her repulsorlifts. The children never said a word. Luke lifted his head off the deck to stop the annoying buzz in his ears and tried to sit upright. This was not good. He had a really bad feeling about it.

---

"There."

Beru turned at Obi-Wan's voice to stare in the direction he was pointing. "That's just an old storage shed." She strode over, a frown on her brow. Owen followed and they saw that, more specifically, Obi-Wan was pointing to a broken air bracket. The ground around it was scuffed and the Tatooine wind hadn't yet settled it back down.

Obi-Wan squatted and gingerly lifted the panel. It came away easily from it's frame. "Yes. Luke hid in there."

"He's not there anymore though." Owen said. He leaned back against the wall, trying to look as inconspicuous as he could with his two companions crouched down in a busy street, studying an air bracket.

"No..." Obi-Wan stood and looked up and down the street, then up at the building.

"Well we can't go in the way he did, unless that Force of yours comes with some magic shrinking tricks. Let's find the street running parallel to this one and go in that way." Owen pushed off from the wall.

The Jedi ignored his snide comment. "Agreed," he said.

Around the other side there was a small entranceway to the same building, and Owen forced it open with his shoulder. "I really wish we had some blasters..." he murmured as they walked into the darkness. But the building was deserted, and had been for a while by the look of it. The door opened onto a small storage room, thick with dust and grime, with spaces for large pieces of equipment which had either been pilfered or hurriedly removed.

Obi-Wan walked to a door on the other side and opened it slowly, listening.

"This way." He walked through and climbed a small flight of steps up to the next level of the building. A heavy drape, also dust ridden, and they made it into a large, double level workhouse. Beru stepped out in front of him, hair afire with the dusty light.

"He's not here," she said sadly.

"No, but he was." Obi-Wan had moved across the room to where small footsteps emerged from a similar entranceway up from another storage room. He looked at them as husband and wife approached, and followed their path, cloak sweeping the floor.

To the ladder, the upper platform and-

His breath caught in his throat but he heard a gasp escape him. Beru looked up at him in shock. "What?" Concern evident.

"Oh, sweet stars... it can't be!"

Suddenly he was an apprentice again, his Master fiercely defending his choice to allow Anakin to race to buy their ship parts.

"What!"

To race in that podracer.

His feet compelled him across the floor and to climb up the ladder. He reached the racer's side, trying to suppress the memories.

"Anakin's podracer." The words barely made it out his mouth, he was so disbelieving.

The shroud had been pulled from it and lay on the floor, and next to it...Obi-Wan picked up Luke's discarded top.

"In all of Mos Espa, on all of Tatooine, Luke chose this storage house to hide in," he said, amazed and shocked. His hand reached for the podracer's hull and touching it sent a jolt of electric through his arm as the image of the cocky nine-year-old Anakin came to his mind unbidden.

"Anakin's?" A small voice said beside him. Beru had climbed up to look at the racer. Owen stayed on the lower deck, pale as death.

Obi-Wan tore his eyes from the ship and it's memories to face the woman he had charged with Anakin's son's welfare. "I have no idea what it's doing here, or how Luke found it," he admitted. He leaned over to look at the small cockpit and saw the lights on the screens. Luke had managed to get he ancient thing up and running instinctively. What had he been saying about not being a reincarnation of that wayward boy?

Regardless of the boy's disturbing discovery, he wasn't here anymore. Something must have disturbed him.

A quiet descended on the room as they stared at the ship, each lost in their own private, painful memories.

The sound of a ship's engines broke their thoughts. Owen whirled around looking for it's source, Obi-Wan's head instinctively looked to the ceiling. He walked to the large door in front of the racer and keyed it to open. Owen joined him. "Kenobi?"

The door opened onto a permacrete roof, and rising above that was an old battered transport. Instinctively, no need for the Force, Obi-Wan knew Luke was aboard. Before he could stop her Beru ran forward onto the roof. He grabbed a handful of air trying to stop her.

"Luke!"

She had realised it too, and she stared in anguish as Obi-Wan ran after her, as the ship orientated itself above the rooftops. He grabbed her to stop her from doing anything stupid, and then with a flash of the sublight drives the ship was racing over the town.

She gasped for breath and threw the Jedi's hold off her. She whirled on him, but her eyes caught the podracer in the dark. "Can you-"

"No. That Star Destroyer sees a podracer down here and we're done for. We might as well spell out 'your son is here' in dewback bones if we're going to do that."

She trembled as Owen hugged her and Obi-Wan watched the shuttle disappear into a dark speck on the horizon. Not climbing for orbit yet...

"We need a ship," he said.