Alright: here is part two of 'Tatooine'. If you need to see the disclaimer or story summary, please see part one.
Reviewers: k00lgirl1808 - "wouldn't Owen and Brue be Fimler with Anikin Skywalker as Owens Father Married Anikins Mother as his seound wife."
Thank you for your concern in the story, but as I said in part one, I don't know much about the early periods of Star Wars. If your information is correct, than please consider this to be AU. Also, it would help if you made your reviews a little clearer, I had trouble understanding what you were saying.
It was hard work raising Luke. Harder than either of them had imagined.
They had stumbled past the first few weeks with the help of the Darklighters', who had four children of their own and another on her way. The neighboring family had been kind enough not to ask questions as to where the boy had come from, and by the time Luke was a year old, it was generally accepted that he was a nephew. But of course even the communities of moisture farmers had their bad eggs, and one man in particular had his heart set at destroying the Lars family.
"You shouldn't steal children, Beru, who knows who will come back for him," Wilkes, the wrinkly old man that lived on the Farrows' homestead said to her one day when she was buying the weeks load of Otolla. No one liked him, not even the Farrows, who waited eagerly for him to die - although he never seemed to. It was common gossip among the women, who would often congregate in their free time, that he was a fallen Jedi, exiled from the Order because of his treachery. The tales had sprouted there, giving stories of his murders and rapes as well as treason. Wiles, opposite of most men, wallowed in his infamy and actually encouraged the whispers to continue, feeding into the line of stories with his own flavors.
But he upset Beru none the less, not for his talked about atrocities, but for the closeness his remarks hit home. What if Vader did know about Luke? What if he wanted him back? The questions were always on her mind. She told Owen about her concerns, but he had only kissed her on the cheek and told her not to worry.
She was alone in the shop, a filthy place filled with vegetables of varying colors and ages, but mostly of the same species. Wilkes, the owner of the shop - another reason the Farrows family wanted him to die quickly - watched her, his eyes darting from her to the child like a Kwat dragon.
Beru, with Luke slung to her chest in a Baby-Bag, picked up another Otolla. They were useful plants, among the only that grew successfully on the planet. They didn't have much taste, but they filled you up quickly. Setting the oval shaped plant next to its brothers she paid Wilkes quickly and turned to leave.
"You wont be safe forever." His voice was not unlike his skin, cracked and old, but it still held power.
He was a greedy man, all the people of Tatooine were, though they didn't admit it. His white and red hair was slimy despite its exposure to the sun and his skin broken and rough. It was not his looks that were particularly displeasing though, but his personality. All day he would sit in the grimy window of his shop watch people, scornfully spitting at them through the doorway if they dared pass by his walk. He hated nearly everyone for reasons that were purely his own and was not afraid to admit it. The one thing Beru found less frightening of him, was the fact that he was not a supporter of the Empire, also for reasons that were purely his own. No one in Anchor-Head or its adjoining farms knew quite what had happened to the old man, only that it was too terrible for even the women to gossip about.
Beru slipped her bag of vegetables over her shoulder and onto her back, keeping the lumps a safe distance from the infant Luke. She said nothing to him and opened the door, heading out into the almost intolerable heat of the desert day.
Tatooine was not, contrary to the belief of the few who had heard of it elsewhere in the galaxy, a hot dust bowl of brown sand, but a complex ecosystem of its own. There were hot seasons where both suns were almost always present leaving only a few hours of dark every forty hours or so and a cold season when both suns were scarce, leaving the planet in a cold darkness for days at a time. Of course with their solar plan, these seasons only occurred every fifty years or so, but the people of Tatooine were currently experiencing one of the worst hot seasons in years.
Droughts, worse than the everyday drought that was life on the planet, were common and many moisture farmers struggled to produce even meager amounts of the precious liquid. Droids malfunctioned in the unconditional heat and death was not uncommon despite their rugged conditioning for it.
The hot season was also when the Tusken Raiders struck the worst.
Not much was known about them, even to the savvy people of Tatooine. Their settlements were avoided and their culture forgotten. Even their language was a mystery. It was known, though, that they were old, older than the moisture farmers, older than the Hutts, and older than even the prehistoric-like Jawas. It was rumored, among the men mostly this time, that they were from the original Tatooine - before it was a desert. It was a hard concept to imagine, but before dunes lined the horizon, trees used to. Oceans and expanses of water shifted not unlike the sand in the heat of the day and the wind created waves of water, not dust. Things had changed though, and jungle the planet was no more, let only with sand.
Beru, only twenty-nine, was perfectly aware of all these dangers, as any sane Tatooine inhabitant would be, and hurried home as quickly as possible. She pulled her white scarf over her head and shaded Luke as best she could.
The scarf had been a gift from her father, a last farewell to his third daughter as she and Owen placed the woven crowns on each others heads. It wasn't much, but he had told her it was from Alderaan, even if it wasn't true, and she had thanked him for it.
Dust covered feet took her home faster then she had thought possible, and soon she was in her house again, pulling off her outer shoes and placing on the cloth booties worn inside the house. She fed Luke his formula - based off of milk, Otolla, and water - in silence, a thing that seemed to come from the house much of the time. Luke, on the other hand, preferred not to be silent at all, and as soon as he was set down he began to scream and wail in such ways even the desert could not imitate.
She tried for a long time to quiet him, rocking him back and forth, speaking to him and changing his under-cloths before settling on telling him a story. She set the child back against her chest and began to speak.
"Many people who have come to Tatooine have wondered why the desert screams every night." Beru stopped. She was tempted to scientifically explain how the grains of sand rolled against each other when the wind picked up but decided against it. This was a children's story, she told herself.
"You see, the desert has a name, she is called Totoreoro, for her golden complexion. Totoreoro was born from the death of her mother and father, the Ocean, Fracelt, and the Jungle, Foretot, in a fiery moment of the worlds. And in their place, she existed.
"One of her first friends were the lovers, the suns. They were called Reos and Rinos, and were always together. In the first moments of Totoreoro's life the three of them became fast friends, playing together and working together to create the world we know now.
"But Totoreoro had a brother, whom is often forgotten in the tales. He was wind, named Nimaru for his love of speed, and also loved the suns. Together they would create the hot breezes that we can still feel today if we walk outside.
"But just as soon as the brother and sister and the lovers had become friends, the suns were whisked away by night, Nihal, the only evil thing that survived the death of Fracelt and Foretot, the ocean and the Jungle.
"Nihal, Reos and Rinos battled on for a very long time, and in their absence the wind and the desert cried together - the wind pushing the sand and the sand screaming and moaning.
"But, very soon, the suns began to win the battle, climbing upwards in the sky until they could be seen again and Totoreoro and Nimaru stopped their sand tears and were happy.
"But, every so often Nihal comes back and wages war against the suns and Totoreoro and Nimaru once again begin to cry.
"And that is why the desert screams at night."
Luke, by some small desert miracle, had stopped crying also and Beru breathed a sigh of relief. The boy seemed to have fallen asleep near the end of the story and was still laying in it blissfully. As much as she loved him, there was only so much screaming and crying a mother - aunt, she reminded herself - could take. She held him for a few minutes, watching him breathe.
It was when she was setting him down in the borrowed crib that she heard the noise first.
It was a howl first, not unlike the night screams. But it wasn't night, and the howl was not identical. Night screams were almost soothing, a reliable sound that was a lullaby to the people of Tatooine. It was impossible to replicate and any Tatooine inhabitant, child or adult, felt its absence when he or she left.
But this was not the desert screams. It was harder, faster and more aggressive and the sand didn't cooperate with the wind, it was driven by it.
It was almost impossible to hear at first, white noise in Luke's absent cries.
And then it grew.
Beru moved from Luke's room which joined their own, to the front of the house. Sand began to seep in through he walls, sifting restlessly once it hit the floor. The smallest particles of dust continued to come and Beru remembered.
She had heard this howl before, it was a legend not unlike the one she had just told to Luke, but she had witnessed its reality when she was young.
She and her father had been working on the heat generators - they always malfunctioned in the hot season. She was eleven. They had spent the afternoon, in the shade of the Friga tree that grew on every moisture farm, rejoining circuits and redirecting the power couplings to make room for the sweltering heat that melted leads and wires. The second sun was just passing overhead when they first heard it.
It whooshed, exactly like it was now, almost silent at first, then growing… and growing until it seemed it would burst your ears. And then she had seen it. Her eyes were younger and faster than her fathers and she had spotted it before he had. It was a wall. A wall of pure sand, the deserts agony washed into one tangible, destructive force.
Her father, who was twenty years older than she was now, had looked at it, not saying a word. He stared as it approached, aged blue eyes frozen in fear. It took him ten whole seconds to fly into motion. He stood up, stumbling in the shifting sand, swept her up into his big arms and ran.
It was the first time she had seen her father truly fear. Yes, he had often worn a frown when the water wasn't flowing or the droids were malfunctioning worse than usual, but no fear had ever penetrated his dust worn face. To see it frightened her, but to see the wall of sand frightened her more.
There were tales, plenty of them, that told of the horrors of the deserts anger, how when it was too hot for even her to manage her anger and frustration were released in a wave of the largest grains of sand. Stories of its destruction rose, of how beautiful it looked but how deadly. It happened every few cycles, it was said, but only once on the entirety of the planet, so the likely hood that you would see it in your life time, witness its power, was unlikely.
But she had seen it, seen it sweep away the lesser built houses. Their equipment, they had watched fly away, trapped in an almost airless vacuum of dust. Droids flew, speeders were picked up off the ground faster than they had ever flown before. Even people, caught unawares or simply too dumb or frightened to take suitable shelter. Madam Horrais, an energetic worker but often lacking in the smarts, was swept along with her dewback caught in the wastes. She was found three days later on a roof in Mos Eisle.
Needless to say, when Beru heard this sound, growing faster and faster in her ears, she ran. She ran back to Luke who had woken in the noise and pulled his crib into the cellar - which was not at all a cellar really, but a cabinet of sorts in the floor of the kitchen - fitted it with a sand-proof screen, and rushed to put back on her outer shoes.
Beru wasn't a particularly brave woman, compared to all the Sith and Jedi women in the galaxy, but when it came to her family, which had recently grown by its smallest member, she was quite protective. The idea that Owen could be out there, a soon to be Madam Horrais on a roof in Mos Eisle, made her almost sick.
The dust continued to seep through the walls, spilling onto the piles of its brethren as she walked to the door. Clouds of it mushroomed above the cracks and the sifting little squeaks of it almost rivaled the roar of the wall itself.
She was five feet from the door now, four feet, three feet. She did not want to open the plaster barrier, the only thing keeping her out of the storm. As well as protective streak, she had an overpowering trend for self-preservation.
But her struggle against fear and love was interrupted as a great knocking, muffled by the sound of the wind, came from the door.
She stood there, frozen, not unlike her father had stood staring at the storm when he had first seen it, before racing the last three feet to its handle and swinging it open, letting in a great blast of hard dust and wind.
As well as two figures, covered head to toe in the golden kernels that ruled the planet.
They stepped in quickly, allowing her to shut the door - which took nearly all of her Tatooine might - and the first figure, whom she now recognized to be Owen, stepped forward. "Beru," he started, his voice sounding like the winds and almost hidden by its own yelling. But Beru didn't let him finish, instead she gave him a firm scolding and stepped on his foot - a habit that seemed to be growing.
Owen had the kindness to look reprimanded and continued bashfully. "Wilkes' store is gone. He will have to stay with us until it is over." There was no explanation needed for where exactly his store had disappeared to.
The figure behind Owen - now identified as Wilkes - stepped forward. He, unlike the younger moisture farmer, had not brushed the sand off of his face and his only distinguishable features were his slightly visible red hair and the startling green eyes that glared at her. They, unlike the rest of him, had not been lessened with age.
He said nothing to them as Beru led them to the kitchen through the howls of the storm. It was the sturdiest place in the house, they had decided, and the woman had scooped Luke up into her arms as soon as a moment to do so arose.
They sat there for a very long time, none of them looking the others in the eyes and Owen and Beru nervously passing Luke between them. The child was, by some strange fluke, quite quiet.
Wilkes was the first one to speak, his old voice lifting over the sounds of the storm. "How old is he, that little devil of yours?"
She and Owen shared a look before he answered. "Nearly four cycles." He was holding Luke as he spoke, and held the child protectively to his chest.
Wilkes grunted in response and returned to watching the sand pile at the bottom of the cracks in the walls.
The silence once again descended, only it wasn't really silence, for the almost pain filled screams of the desert in storm howled against their ears, causing an unease in their hearts.
Wilkes lifted his eyes and stared at Luke again. His forehead creased and left his eyes dimmed. "I remember what…" He stopped and shook his head. "I don't know where you got that thing Beru, but they will take it from you." His brow creased even further until his dust covered eyebrows bent over his green globes. "They always take them… It used to be the Order, but now it's the Empire."
Beru and Owen stared wide eyed at their visitor but said nothing.
"They always take what they can use, and they can use the force."
Now the new parents' jaws had dropped, causing Wilkes to glare at them. Owen, who was always quick to protect his family, bristled and gave Luke back to Beru. "Our Luke is not a Jedi," he began, but Wilkes just snorted.
"Don't be naïve, of course he is. Why did you think he was here, with you of all people? The Jedi, the Empire, they aren't so different from each other. Both kill, both steal, both maim, both hunt, the distinction is pointless."
It was at this point in time that Beru began to wonder if the old man had been drinking. That was one of the many rumors floating around about him and perhaps one of the truer. In fact, she could smell something on his breath, other than dust. Maybe-
"But no one does anything! No one notices how powerful they become until it is too late, no one notices the armies they build until they have destroyed each other, no one notices the babies they steal until they are already grown!"
At this Owen and Beru blinked.
"What do you mean-"
"Took my own daughter, the Jedi Order did, and now I hear that my grand child has been stolen by the Empire!"
Owen, still holding Luke, shifted the child in his arms and stared at Wilkes openly. "Your child was stolen?"
"Yes! The beloved Order of yours came in the night, unlocked our door with that confounded 'force' of theirs and took her!"
Beru spoke up, smoothing her skirt idly, "Surely they must have asked you…before taking her…"
"You give the fiends too much credit!" Wilkes green eyes flashed brilliantly and his hands shook as he waved them about his head. "They took my little girl, she was only a half a cycle old and they took her! She had the prettiest little eyes and little tufts of red hair… and they took her! To train her as a Jedi, to make her a 'savior of the galaxy'."
Owen rocked Luke back and forth and up and down wondering with his brown creased if that was how his mother felt… if that was how nearly everyone felt.
But Wilkes was not finished. He raised his wind worn hands up again and battled his own voice against the still raging wind, "But that was not so bad. I could survive, and I did. I lived on many different planets, different worlds and I survived. I never had another daughter mind you, but I lived. And now, my beloved child is dead and her only living girl now under the care of the Empire. The next you will know of my grandchild is of her murders and her bright red hair…"
Beru fiddled so more with her skirt before taking Luke out of Owen's arms and back into her own.
Wilkes spit on to the floor, his saliva mingling slowly with the grains of sand, darkening them before slipping beneath to the floor. "Its not the order you have to worry about any more though, they are dieing faster than Jawas on hunting day. It is the Empire that you have got to watch for. They are growing more and more powerful, pretty soon, there won't be an Order at all, just the Empire, and I can assure you, they wont let something as useful as that child left unspoiled." Wilkes spit again.
"As we told you before, Luke isn't a Jedi, he never will be a Jedi…"
Wilkes eyes flashed again and he glared at them. "If I can tell, anyone can. That devil boy of yours is no moisture farmer and he never will be."
Well, that concludes part two of 'Tatooine'. Once again, seeing as this is my first Star Wars fic, anything you have to say to me will be well recieved.
Thank you for reading.