Chapter 12--The Marrying Kind
The next morning, Beru awoke feeling more oriented, if not much stronger. Owen lay on a daybed in her room, snoring loudly. Luke was still quiet. Beru wanted to check on him, but she found standing up beyond her. She reached over, and grabbed the bars of his crib. Pulling it towards her as gently as she could, she managed to raise her head enough to see that he was still sleep, breathing evenly.
"Beru!" It was Owen, rubbing his eyes. "Why didn't you wake me up? I told you I'd help, didn't I?"
He appeared groggy, and he needed a shave. But the effect of the cordial was still evident. Beru could sense less and less suppression from him. His emotions, however, were so mercurial that she could not read them accurately. Not yet, anyway.
She handed him the com-link. "Can you get the medic? I want her to unhook Luke from the i.v." Owen made a face, but he also made the call.
Beru felt calmer after she and the medic had Luke breast feeding again. It amazed her that a child not her own had the power to make her feel so guilty. She really had no responsibility toward him at all. Yet she had committed crimes for him. Betrayed her mentor. Married a man she hardly knew. She knew that, given another choice, she would do it all again. She didn't know why, either. Was he manipulating her, as Owen suggested?
Owen sat down beside her on the bed. He inspected Luke as if he were looking at him for the first time. "Doesn't favor his mother, does he?" he said idly.
"It's not a crime," Beru said stiffly. Criticism of the child immediately ruffled her feathers.
Owen grinned. Prior to their nightmarish wedding ceremony, Beru hadn't known if Owen had any teeth-at least until then she had never seen him display them. Now he was showing them off every five minutes or so. It made him seem like a stranger. "I'll bet she wouldn't agree," he said.
"No bet," Beru said shortly. "You'd win."
"Good for Anakin," Owen said. "At least he had his share."
Beru stared at him. "I didn't think you liked him that much." In fact, she always suspected that Owen had been jealous of Anakin.
"I felt sorry for him," Owen said soberly. "Poor little bastard. He thought he was going to please Ben. Talk about wanting to achieve the impossible."
Beru was astonished at the freedom of this conversation. The other Knights had concluded that nothing went on behind Owen's facade. They had obviously been wrong. "Ben loved him like a son," she said tentatively. She winced at the cliche. It sounded stupid.
"Yeah, sure," Owen muttered. "Let me tell you something about my brother. Nobody is like a son to him, and for good reason. Not me, and not Anakin. In fact, he's uncomfortable with children, and he didn't want the responsibility of either of us. When I was fifteen, my parents died in the macule fever epidemic. Ben came home and took charge of me, but believe me, he was reluctant. So was I. I never wanted to be a Jedi, but I ended up as one anyway. In Anakin's case, someone had to take the boy on after Qui-Jon's death. Frankly, I think he would have been better to send Anakin back to his mother, and to find a foster-home for me. But never let it be said that Obi-Wan," he gave his brother's honorific an ironic inflection, "doesn't know his duty. He does, and he'll do it, and the costs to all and sundry be damned. He discovered pretty quickly with me that I wasn't going to be a credit to him. It took longer with Anakin."
Beru finally asked the question she had often wondered about. "If you were that unhappy, why didn't you leave?"
Panic flared briefly in Owen's eyes. His emotions surged past her so quickly that she could not read them. With an effort, he met her gaze. "Why not ask Anakin why he stayed?" he asked, in an attempt at lightness.
Beru snorted. "I know why he stayed. He had a giant crush on Amidala. Of course, he was only one of many. All the male Knights were mooning after her. Except you, of course," she added teasingly, trying to match Owen's tone. "Why didn't you join the crowd?"
Owen looked her in the eyes. "I was too busy mooning after you."
Beru felt her face flush. "That isn't funny, Owen."
"I'm not joking."
He wasn't, either, she could tell. She had never suspected it before. Nor did she doubt that he meant what he said. The pieces shifted in her brain and began to fit together in a new and alarming pattern.
"You never said anything to me--"
"Do you think I'm stupid?" Owen said, almost shouting. "What would be the point of saying anything? I knew you were in love with Ben."
Beru felt shocked and humiliated. "Did everybody know that?" she asked, her voice cracking.
Owen shrugged. "It was pretty obvious."
"To him, too?" Beru asked, thickly. She had always flattered herself that she had kept it a secret.
"Sure," Owen said easily. "It suited him fine, too, as long as he didn't have to do anything about it. So much so that he scuppered your last engagement. Or didn't you know about that?"
She hadn't. She had been engaged twice. The first time, she had been only twenty, and it had foundered on her inability to have children. Her fiancee claimed that it didn't matter to him, but as the engagement progressed, it became evident that it did, and Beru had broken it off, feeling exceedingly noble, and thoroughly sorry for herself. The second time had been much more serious. Finally despairing of Ben, she had formed a warm relationship with one of the older Knights. He had been a good and honorable man, a widower with young two children. It had seemed perfect. She had liked his children, and they had liked her. If not wildly in love with her fiancee, Beru had liked him very much indeed, and the abrupt end of the engagement--for he had broken it--hurt her deeply.
"How?" she asked, numbly.
"Told him the truth, more or less. No man likes to be second choice," Owen's lips twisted.
"Why would he--"
"Think about it, Beru. He'd lose your services--and believe me, complete devotion is very handy--and if you got married, he was pretty sure I'd leave, too. Suppressors are pretty rare, and can be very useful. And if his acolytes seldom come up to his standards, Ben doesn't like to lose them, either. I knew you were upset, but that was the one time I cheered Ben on."
"I can't believe he'd treat me that way."
Owen looked at her. "Compared to Anakin, you got off lightly."
Beru sucked in her breath. "So it's true, then?"
"Yes. The only thing I'm not sure about is whether Anakin knew the whole truth before or after he and Amidala were married. I suspect after. It fits."
"He must have known that the child wasn't his."
"He may not have known that she was pregnant," Owen said. "But they had to find someone to marry him. Time was getting short."
"You don't know this for sure."
"Oh, yes, I do," Owen said, "And you know why? Because Ben asked *me* to marry her."
Beru was speechless.
Anakin and Amidala's marriage had been a nine day's wonder. He was considerably younger than her, and she had always treated him with rather impatient affection, as an annoying, if amusing, younger brother. Socially, too, it hadn't been an obvious match. Amidala was royal and from a sophisticated Middle Rim planet. Anakin was a former slave from a wretched Outer Rim planet. Yet they had come in one day and announced to the rest of the Knights that they had married. Anakin had been innocently joyful; Amidala furtive, as if she had done something of which she was ashamed. She had, of course, but as it turned out, it wasn't the marriage itself. Shortly after the wedding, she had a miscarriage. Rumors instantly flew that the child had not been Anakin's.
"I take it you said no."
"No kidding."
"So they picked on Anakin?"
"I suppose. I suspect that they weren't as honest with him as they were with me. Though the word 'they' might not be appropriate. I was Ben's bright idea. I think Anakin was Amidala's candidate. Ben was presented with a done deal."
"Was Ben the father of the baby?" Beru asked.
"The first one? I don't know."
"You didn't ask?"
Owen shrugged. "None of *my* business. Unless I was prepared to marry her myself, which I wasn't."
Beru stared at him. "Well, why not?" she asked. "She's rich, well-born, good-looking, and fertile. A much better bet than me."
Owen grimaced. "No thanks. Look what happened to Anakin. A fat lot of good all those things did him."
"The twins *are* his, though," Beru said. "Amidala told me they were."
"I'm not sure I'd believe her. Anakin did, and look what happened to him."
"I believe it. She wouldn't hate Luke so much if it wasn't true. She keeps saying that he's exactly like Anakin and will go the same way."
Owen scratched his chin. "Well, we always hate those we've wronged the most, don't we?" he said, surprising Beru still more. "And we blame them for the bad things we do to them--obviously it has to be their fault, or we wouldn't do it, would we? Since Anakin isn't currently available for that, Luke'll do in a pinch. Bad luck on him, though."
Beru wiped the milk off Luke's mouth. Bad luck indeed, or 'born under a bad star' as the common saying went. She looked the baby over carefully. His eyes were flickering back and forth between her and Owen as though he was following their conversation. Beru sensed that he could not understand the nuances, but realized he was being discussed. She felt a stab of fear. His future filled her with foreboding.
"Does Anakin know about the twins?" she asked Owen. She had never been able to bring herself to ask Obi-Wan this question.
Owen shrugged. "Beats me. You could ask Amidala; she might even answer you. If he does, though,
he may not believe they're his. And you could scarcely blame him."
No: you couldn't blame him for that, Beru thought, patting Luke's back. "If he gets close, he should be able to tell Luke is, from his Force signature. I think so, anyway. Not the girl: her signature is like Amidala's. But Luke, yes."
"I doubt Anakin would care," Owen said.
"You're wrong there. He'd care all right." A marvelous irony, Beru thought. Anankin was lost in the Dark Side, but of the baby's parents, he was the one less likely to commit infanticide. But she didn't doubt that infanticide would be a kinder fate for the child than falling into Anakin's hands.
"Would Anakin be able to sense him?" she asked Owen, hesitantly.
Owen shrugged. "If we ever slow down, I expect we'll find out," he predicted grimly.