Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi seemed to sit closer to each other than Owen would have expected from a pair where one had allegedly murdered the other. That fact clearly didn't stop the two from being almost chummy either, trading glances and warm looks even while eating Beru's half-famous Bantha stew.

Owen, for his own part, was silently brewing his own brand of questions.

The first and foremost being what the fragg happened to Anakin? Although he'd been meaning to ask it for at least half an hour now, he'd never been able to get a word in, what with Beru's incessant chattering about this and that. Unlike Owen, she'd been way more okay with Kenobi killing Anakin (allegedly), going so far as to become downright curious about the old wizard. As much good as that did her now.

So, while Beru tried to wring Kenobi's living situation out of him ("Sand People never bother you? Do you eat well?"), Owen let his gaze linger about Anakin.

The Hero With No Fear.

Now, Owen was no regular at the various spaceports, nor had he ever taken the time to keep up with the Holonet, but even in a backwater world like Tatooine, everyone knew about Anakin. Owen liked to think he knew him better. After all, they both shared a mother. Well, for Owen it was more of a stepmother, but to him, she'd been as close as his father.

And if there was one thing she would never stop talking about, it was Anakin. Her little boy. Sent off to become a Jedi and save the world or something like that. Dozens upon dozens of bed-time stories about this Anakin, about the boy who was his brother. How he won the Boonta Eve Podracing cup, the only human to so much as ride a podracer, the first to win and at such a young age as well.

And here he sat across from Owen, looking mournfully into his emptied bowl.

Only in the light inside his homestead had he been able to notice that Anakin clearly wore the clothes Kenobi had bartered off of him only days before. He'd paid with a little part he'd somehow known Owen would need to repair a faulty vaporator. It was an odd detail, one that only deepened the mystery of what was actually happening here.

However, even with those secondhand clothes, his lack of limbs was all too obvious. All four of them had been severed someplace below the shoulder and thigh. How it had happened Owen couldn't know, but what he did know was that these prosthetics couldn't possibly have been created by a professional. It almost seemed as though the parts had been scavenged off of a broken-down speeder rather than bought for the occasion. Oh, except his right arm, that was.

The arm currently resting atop the table was made of smooth metals and had an almost completely black colour. It had a few nicks and burns, but it was mostly whole.

But the damage done to Anakin's limbs were nothing compared to his actual body.

With clothes obscuring most of it, the only part that hinted at how his torso might actually look was his scarred and bruised neck. Comparatively, his face and head almost seemed to have fared better, but even then it was a corsply pallour. More befit the inhabitant of some icy planet than here where the suns assaulted at every moment. Ignoring the minor emotional break the man had had outside the homestead, Anakin had shown no real expression of anything. At all.

Barely even the ghost of a smile played on his lips, most visible when he regarded the young boy who hopped about his legs.

All and all, he seemed like a man who'd been living in a cave for seven years and only now escaped. It felt weird and it felt wrong and so far Owen hadn't even been able to ask about it.

But soon, he would. As soon as Beru would just pipe down about hearing from a friend of a friend about a Krayt Dragon being heard about the pass.

Anakin shifted where he sat.

It wasn't that his sandstone seat was uncomfortable or anything, he just wanted to pull his attention away from Owen. The man had been staring at him ever since they came inside, and somehow, it had only grown more intense as Obi-Wan and Beru's chattering had become louder. It made him feel anxious, that was all. Maybe Owen didn't like Anakin? It wouldn't be too strange. Owen must have known that - had Anakin only arrived a few days earlier all those years ago - Shmi might just have survived.

He must know that, right? What other reason would he have to stare at him like that?

There was a short break in Beru and Obi-Wan's conversation.

"Say," Owen said after all his silence. "Will you please explain what in the stars is happening?"

Anakin glanced over to regard how his old master replicated Anakin's uncomfortable shifting. "We're having dinner," he said. "Is there anything else that should be-,"

"You know kriffing well that isn't what I meant, Kenobi. Seven years. Seven years ago, you came to us and told you Anakin had died by your hand and that we had to take care of his kid. Hide him from the Empire, lest he get kidnapped or something. And I trusted you, because - hey! It's a favour for Anakin," Owen said, giving Anakin an almost reassuring look. "Not for you, Kenobi. It was never for you and you know it. I don't trust you much, but I trusted you when you said Anakin died. But here he is."

Obi-Wan folded his hands on the table, and all of a sudden he wasn't uncle Ben or Obi-Wan; he was The Negotiator. "I would never willingly deceive you. When I told you that my student had passed, I was speaking with utmost honesty."

Owen pointed at Anakin. "He's right there. Clearly, far from deceased."

"The way Anakin Skywalker had died was not a way many would consider death," Obi-Wan said. "He had…" Obi-Wan glanced at Anakin, "turned. Turned his back on the order, renounced his name and title; he was no longer a man you would recognize. He had become Darth Vader, Sith Lord and ruler of the Empire. Though, if you must know, he has returned now in full."

Owen looked at him as though he'd told him magic made suns burn. "I have no idea what that means, Kenobi."

"He became everything the Republic had been trying to fight," Obi-Wan said solemnly.

Astonishingly, Owen merely shrugged. "How's that such a bad thing?"

Now even Anakin couldn't keep quiet. "Owen, you're speaking like a separatist."

All Owen could see fit to give him was a vaguely sympathetic look before he turned his anger back at Obi-Wan. "Look, I'm not a Jedi. On this sinkhole of a planet, nobody is. We can't see what's happening there in the core, or even in the middle rim. All we know is that out here, the Republic don't mean much. Here, the rule of the Hutts is the law." Owen leaned back, eyes peering out the window and into the night. "But you know what? While the Republic didn't do much out here, the Empire does."

"You can't seriously be saying this," Obi-Wan said.

"I know you ain't in town often, but you see them troopers, right? They don't do much, but they're proof that at least the Empire cares. That's all we can see. Out here, we're not pro-Empire or pro-Republic. We're pro-anything but this."

Obi-Wan gently buried his face in his hands. "I beg of you to believe me when I say that if the Republic could have helped you, it would. But there is only so much we can do in a galaxy as expensive as this one."

Suddenly, some meek relief showed on Owen's scraggly face, though it seemed rooted more in the past than now. "The only time the Republic ever helped us was when Anakin arrived. Can you believe it? That a Jedi would come all the way out here… Must be the Force, eh?" He showed a toothy grin, but Obi-Wan ignored it in favour for the other things Owen said.

"Anakin… came here?" he asked, noticing with no little amount of trepidation how Anakin slowly sunk in on himself, clearly hoping to escape any mention of this place and himself.

"Huh?" Owen said. "I thought you would'a-, well, I guess it isn't too important, is it? Compared to fighting in great wars and saving planets, defeating a village of Tuskens and bringing his mum home would just be a matter of routine." The look Obi-Wan gave him - desolate and confused - begged him to continue. "Well, I suppose, in a way, he didn't quite bring mum back, but," Owen smiled warmly at Anakin. "To us, it meant the world."

"It's alright," Anakin mumbled, but it was clear he would rather be anywhere but here. He couldn't even look his former master in the eye. Even less so Owen and Beru, who gazed at him with such fond gratitude that it almost made him forget why he'd never told his master about it.

"How do you mean?" Obi-Wan asked, clearly unwilling to give up on the matter. Anakin really felt like strangling him. The man could be stubborn at times - almost as stubborn as Anakin, and only now did he remember how much he hated it.

"Well, I suppose," Owen said. "It isn't a fun story. Nor a much uncommon one out here. Even you must have heard them by now. Tusken Raiders, taking people in the night. Or morning, as it was for poor mum. We-," Owen turned to glance at Beru and Luke. "We tried to get her back. Launched a big assault and everything. Thirty of us, myself included, went out. Only four came back. They set a trap. With only four of us, my dad barely alive, there just wasn't any way for us to save her. We'd all but given up when Anakin showed up."

The smile on Owen's face brimmed with gratefulness.

Anakin wished he could have choked it off of him.

Obi-Wan motioned for the man to continue.

"Not much I can say what happened after that. Only Anakin here left, and then he came back with Shmi. It was-, I suppose it was bittersweet. Glad to have her back. Sad she didn't make it. Didn't take long for Cliegg to follow her to the grave…"

"What about the Tuskens?" Obi-Wan asked. "You spoke of-,"

"Oh, yes, we did find where she was kept, though that was long after Anakin had left in a hurry." Here it was. Anakin could feel it coming, his black-hot shame welling up inside. Already, he could see Owen's disgusted face at what he had done. At what he had become atop these dunes. "I can't speak for all of us, but I think it's a right good thing what happened."

"Huh?" Anakin said.

Owen grinned broadly. "He took out each and every one of them! A real merit. One could almost wish all Jedi would be so gracious with a lightsaber."

"He… Killed them all?"

"A whole village of them. Most reproachfully. Didn't even stand a chance! Here we are, losing almost thirty men to a bunch of them, and a Jedi could easily take them all on. He even took care of the spawn."

"The spawn?" Obi-Wan asked in a whisper.

Owen shrugged. "The children. Young ones. Whatever you call 'em, it's really just a small Tusken. One less Tusken spawn means one less Tusken means one less wife taken in the night. Or even a child."

Anakin felt like he could pass out at any moment. Obi-Wan might not be looking at him, but he could feel the disquiet of his presence. It was like a silent scolding. Worst of all, Anakin didn't feel a lick of shame about slaughtering the Tuskens. In his heart, he still felt like they deserved every slash they got. No, he was far more ashamed of the fact that he never told his master. Even more so that he couldn't save Shmi.

"You see," Owen continued. "You don't really have a choice. If you lay down and just take what they send at you, you can't do a thing. There's no government out here to do that for you. And if you want to defend against these animals, you need to use their own tactics and ruthlessness. Otherwise, they'd slaughter us."

Obi-Wan didn't seem convinced. If anything, he seemed chastised. "Is that your excuse for murdering children?"

"They're not children," Owen said. "They're future murderers."

At this, Obi-Wan finally turned to look at Anakin. "What's your excuse?"

Anakin hadn't seen Obi-Wan like this since he first woke up on this planet. It was difficult to take, being gazed at with those hard, cold eyes yet again. His mind floundered for an excuse, for something to say - anything that might appease his former master. But there was nothing. When he did it, the murder of the Jedi Younglings had been perfectly justified. They had been indoctrinated past the point of return; letting them live would only open up opportunities for revenge or indiscriminate violence. An unhinged Force-wielder was worse than a Sith.

"...I have none," he finally said.

A look of betrayal flashed across Owen's face. It quickly turned to hurt. "I don't care what either of you thinks. Getting rid of those pests was a service to the community. If you had any common sense, you'd do it again."

Anakin stood up, and without taking a look at anyone else, he walked outside.

The air was frigid and dry, as it always is on Tatooine nights. Tree cyclops moons gazed down at him, lapping at the edges of the sand dunes and mountains, basking the dune sea into ocean blue. Although the sands were dark, the sky was bright and glittering with stars. A band of clusters and distant nebulae stretched across the night-sky, altogether shining as bright as the moons themselves.

In the outer sectors of Mos Espa, where Anakin had grown up, the stars had never been this bright. They likely never would be. Pollution and nighttime lights forced the stars into hiding. Only on rare occasions, be it when Anakin's landspeeder broke down late or he and his mother chose to take a trek, the stars would be visible, and Anakin would feel alive.

Sometimes, looking up at so many stars, he'd feel so insignificant and little. But then he'd feel inside of himself, touch the bright light in there and know that he would one day shine as bright as any star above.

But that was years ago.

Moving once more over the sensors, disarming them as he went, he found a patch of sand beside the two graves to sit upon. Hers was just a headstone, same with Cliegg.

Anakin had never known Cliegg Lars much. From what he saw so many years ago, the man was just a hovering husk. Apparently, from what Anakin had been able to glean from Beru and Obi-Wan's conversation, Cliegg had refused prosthetics.

Briefly, Anakin wondered if he would have done the same if he'd lost his limbs as a Jedi.

Now, he didn't have much choice either way.

A bit behind him, he heard the door to the hut slide open, a slice of light erupting to brighten the headstones, only for it to soon close once more.

Aft, he heard the quiet padding of soft-soled shoes. Like a sand-panther moving gently over the black dunes. Anakin didn't have to look to know who it was. The paper lantern of his presence was enough.

Obi-Wan sat down next to him. His half-grey bristle of hair shone silver beneath the stars and his eyes seemed to glimmer. "She was a kind, compassionate woman," he said. "Never a thought for herself."

Anakin didn't answer.

"If I had known," Obi-Wan began. The words seemed to echo far across the dunes. "I would have told you not to go."

"I know," Anakin replied quietly.

Obi-Wan turned to look at him. His eyes were old, wise. Wrinkled with forgotten laughter. "But you would have gone anyway. The result would have been the same, wouldn't it?"

"No," Anakin said. "It wouldn't. You would have known. That's the only difference that matters." The night seemed very cold where they sat. The sand was still slightly warm from the day, but it would only be a matter of time before that warmth was also swallowed by the cold of the night. "I would've been expelled from the Jedi Order, and none of this would have happened."

"Would things be better?" Obi-Wan asked from too far away.

"I don't know," Anakin answered honestly. "Maybe. Padmé would be alive, but… I guess, things are the way they are following the will of the Force. Trying to look into some other world where everything went well is a waste of time."

Obi-Wan regarded him for a moment. His eyes seemed to contain the stars. "Do you know why the Jedi kept records of everything?" Anakin looked back. His heart felt black and empty. "Why did the holocrons exist, why do we have historical accounts of the past?" Anakin pulled his knees to his chest as Obi-Wan turned to peer over the black seas of sand. "To know what we did wrong. We look at the past and we see where things went wrong. It's not because we want to regret and bemoan our past mistakes." A faint smile tugged at his lips. "It's so we can grow, to improve.

"You're not wrong to think about the past. Your mistake back then was that you failed to trust in your master. When you should have conferred with me about your proper course of action, you instead kept it from me out of fear of what I might say or do," Obi-Wan said to the winds. "In part, this is my own fault as well. All your mistakes are, on account that I didn't stop them."

"I know," Anakin said - an echo of years of training.

A hand fell on his shoulder and he looked up to meet the starry eyes of his former master. "So. What will you do the next time you're about to do something horrible?"

"...Tell you?"

Obi-Wan grinned. "Exactly."

Without any real response to that, Anakin turned to look past his mother's headstone, past the sands, past the stars and into the future.

Trust Obi-Wan. He could do that, couldn't he? It was easy. Well, maybe not easy, but it was simple. All he had to do was to be honest. Not just with his past, with what he's done, but also with how he is right now. His thoughts, his worries. All of it. Even though Anakin didn't feel it was anything he had any right to bother Obi-Wan about. Jedi weren't supposed to think about their own feelings, but somehow, that's what Anakin kept returning to.

The sand felt nice beneath him. The night air was crisp. Owen, although he had changed a fair bit, still seemed like a nice enough fellow. Beru had become the same kind of quietly strong woman Shmi had been. Luke was just a little boy, but even then it was clear that he was already much different than Anakin had been at his age. The boy carried a childish naivety, a pure sort of innocence that Anakin was afraid to taint. As if his mechanical hands would leave stains of black oil on the boy's white tunic.

And Obi-Wan… Anakin didn't really know what he thought about his old master. He was different. Yes, that was it. Older. Now he wouldn't turn up his nose at any Tatooine dish, or demand a proper bed, or-, or reprimand Anakin for every little thing he did wrong, or hold him back anytime he tapped into his true strength, or grow jealous, or…

Anakin put his thoughts on hold. Those were what led him to this place in the first place.

Trust him. That's it, yes.

"Obi-Wan," he said. His old master turned to him. "What happens now?"

The wizened old man brought a hand up to stroke the edge of his greying beard. "I've been thinking of the same thing." The wind whistled in the distance, bringing up a small gust of sand. "We could stay here. Raise Luke into a Jedi, teach him the code. Owen and Beru might not be too interested in their nephew becoming a warrior, but we have no choice. It's for the sake of the galaxy's future."

"How do you mean?"

Obi-Wan turned to him, a clever, slightly playful smirk crowning his face. "Why, we'll need all the soldiers we can find when facing the Empire."

"We," Anakin said. "We're really doing it? Forgive my apprehension. Compared to a hermit such as yourself, you must understand that I know more about the internal workings of the Empire. There's no stopping this war machine. It is relentless. Despite my absence, the Emperor will continue his conquest. I was merely one of many possible apprentices. Soon, perhaps even now, I will be replaced. After that, it is only a matter of time before they attempt to seek me out. To outright destroy me for fear of my possible mutiny."

"Then, you're suggesting we begin our rebellion this instant?"

Anakin froze. "I would rather not refer to it as a rebellion. All I'm trying to say is that our position may already have been compromised." He paused for a moment, metal hand pinching his chin. "Though, I may have some information we can use in our resistance." Obi-Wan's silence was enough to warrant Anakin to continue. "A massive space station. It's been in the works since… I'm not sure. The plans were conceived by someone most likely dead by now. No, not dead. Terminated."

"I see," Obi-Wan said thoughtfully. "And how can we use this information?"

"We would need a large force. Ships, soldiers… Pilots and as many Jedi as can be found. Constructing this, obtaining the capital and manpower this will require might take years. At that point it could already be completed, but we have no other option."

A chuckle brought Anakin out of his mind. Obi-Wan smirked. "Then, what we'll need is a force already created, one that has been gaining support from countless systems already. One with a devoted following of trained soldiers, one that already has several Jedi cohorts."

"No," Anakin said with a sudden sneer. "No, I will not-,"

"The Rebellion will happily accept your information and assistance, I'm sure," Obi-Wan said as he stood back up, brushing sand off of his robe. "Let's see if we can convince Owen to relinquish his nephew, shall we?"

Anakin continued trying to refute the rock-solid argument even as Obi-Wan returned inside, Anakin himself following closely after.