Author's Note: This chapter was written as part of the 'Writer's Anonymous Flower Language Challenge'. I was assigned the laurel, which, according to gardenerdy, means 'glory'.
The Man With No Glory
They say Tatooine was once a bountiful place. A world as lush as the Nubian Basin.
Bounties are still collected here now, but only on the coin of slug crime lords.
In the old days, its plains were ripe with fields, its people rich and prosperous. Travelers came from light years away, journeyed there when outer space was a not-so conquerable frontier. When it required years and years of sleep in a cryogenic chamber to manage.
The sight that awaited them upon waking was beyond even the wildest of their artificially-induced dreams. Once, not so long, cities gleamed in the kiss of Tatooine's twin suns. On the edge of known space, it was the star that burned brightest.
The people came there for many reasons, stayed for even more. Above all else though, it was a flower that they came for. The flower. The locals gave it a common name in those days, called it a laurel. But it was not like other laurels that filled the galaxy. It was an elixir of life. A glory of riches unto itself. The nectar upon which all of Tatooine's economy hinged.
Then things began to change. As all great societies do, this one started to collapse. The constant industrial churn of a bustling population turned its climates harsh, made its people even more so. Soon they began to war over the riches that brought them glory.
Day by day, the fields grew thin, the rivers ran dry, and the laurels died out. Tatooine became what it is known as now, and that is not such a nice place.
Even now, generations later, people grow nostalgic of those better times. Times they know nothing of.
Tales of greener times are the one thing that can still bring the warring raiders and bitter farmers together. Still gather them around the same campfire. Where they can listen to the same stories in the desert night.
And there is one story that they consider above all others. A cautionary tale. The tale of the man with no glory, the boy with no family, and the flower with no rival.
. . .
13 BBY
Tatooine
The man's nightmares begin the same way they always have, burn the same marks.
On a girder of pure steel he sails across the lava ocean, harsh brushstrokes of orange painting its hellscape all around him. A demon awaits him at world's end; a demon that was once his brother.
Now the man does not know what he has become.
As the man nears the demon, his makeshift raft begins to buckle, plunging him through a tunnel of smoke and magma, hate and ash. He is grinded through the crater of hot rock until it is no more than a wilting caldera.
And then, he is back again. Rooted back inside the humble desert hovel the man dares to call home. Back where the volcanic storm has been raging all along.
All this time and he's only found its rage visible in the confines of his head. Always there, always present, yet the man's stoic features never lend any hints to its turmoil.
Sitting atop his straw cot, the man's graying beard and teary eyes remain forever stuck in contemplation. An onslaught of terrors flash again; the memory of soldiers turning against their generals, of burning libraries where a thousand years of knowledge were lost, of children that were butchered on the temple floors by that same demon.
Thoughts fresh in his mind, he all but pores a line through the peeling drywall of his bedroom. He imagines bursting a hole through that same wall, trudging through the Jundland wastes until he's disappeared into the night and away from his past failings.
But he stays and lets the visions take him where they may.
The fear he remembers having that day on Mustafar is what always bothers him the most. The hate. His lifespan has been spent trying to repel its sway, to deny the pull such emotions had over his nature. The memory of it feels so close as to be tactile.
He remembers every bruise from that fight, every smolder that clogged his lungs. The burn of clothes as his robes were singed by magma. The hue of his blade clashing in fierce combat.
And worst of it all, the hate in his brother's eyes behind every blow.
It's all the man can do to wrench his thoughts once more to the present. To forcefully bring them back where they need to be. Although, a quick survey of his room reminds him there isn't much to root him here.
If Mustafar is hell on this galaxy, then his home on Tatooine is no great reprieve.
Armor from his days in the Clone Wars leans in a corner of his bedroom. It is ancient and blaster-scorched. He leaves it there on purpose. It serves to remind him of a different time in his life. A more valiant one, where the deeds of his glory had been spread for all the galaxy to see.
In a trunk beneath his bed rests the blade that goes along with that armor. An elegant weapon for a more civilized age.
Once, not so long ago, the man had been Obi-Wan Kenobi. Jedi Master and General of the Republic Army. A war hero, a teacher, and a brother.
Now though, he is someone else. The same man with the same name, but none of the same glory.
He keeps it no secret that he has come here to die. That he is to be a watchful, but forgotten protector. A caretaker for the burden that the next generation of Jedi will have to carry on. That is his sworn duty: his plight and his responsibility.
And yet, in recent days he finds himself faltering at the idea, questioning his purpose here on Tatooine. He has already failed this galaxy once. Failed it so spectacularly that his own student took a thousand generations of Jedi down with him. How could he be the one expected to carry on that same legacy now? Was it not all but certain he would fail again?
His life has become a precarious balance of conscience and duty. A constant battle between doubt and hate, fear and anger. All those emotions that a Jedi Master should have conquered long ago.
There's only one tool the fallen Order provided to keep such emotions at bay. One tool he can still stake his purpose on.
Meditation is an old friend. One of the first friends he remembers making as an initiate in the Order. That was how he had centered his nerves back in those early days. How he became the man he once was.
During the war, he almost gave up on meditation altogether. Convinced himself that there was nothing left worth reflecting on. That the Force had already forsaken them all. Forsaken him.
Sitting here, cross-legged on the dusty synstone floor, he decides to do the most important thing a Jedi can do.
He tries again.
At first his meditations bring nothing. Only the familiar cadence of his breath, the soft hum of the moisture venters above him.
Slowly though, there is something else. Something he did not expect to hear. Whispers. Murmurs so quiet at first as not to be heard. Soon they grow in volume, become more familiar, ring out in the one voice he's always been so desperate to hear again.
"Master…?"
For a moment, there is a spark. A moment of excitement. A signal that he's finally being spoken to again after all these years.
He reaches out to him again, reaches further and further, desperate to hear his voice.
And yet, in the end there is no answer. No acknowledgement of his pleas. Only the harsh tin of the sandstorm raging outside. The same storm that's always raged inside him.
. . .
A long time ago, the man remembers learning how to farm. In a past life they say he came from a farmer's world himself. That it had been his lot before the Jedi took him.
He supposes that's how getting along here has become so natural to him. How he's been able to grow fruit on the impossibly harsh desert plains.
Farming had seemed like an unholy defiance of nature at one point. How could life grow on this sort of planet? One with no water and no reprieve from the suns. Somehow his plants have learned to endure in spite of it all. To weather the storm that life had dealt them.
In that moment he realizes the pallie berry he's cupping in his hands already contains more strength than he ever will. That it's an embodiment of all the same Jedi principles he once swore to live his life by.
It takes every ounce of willpower he has left not to crush the fruit in his fist. To gently lower it into the basket with all the others.
Long ago, his fallen master had told him his own thoughts would be his undoing. That they held more sway over him than any enemy. Perhaps now, with even his master denying his calls from beyond the void, he too has become that enemy.
Perishing the thought, the man rises from his slice of crops, stumbles back towards his desert hovel. Back towards another sleepless night.
And yet, he'll have to wait a little longer. There is a boy waiting at the entrance for him. Waiting at horizon's edge. The boy tilts his head inquisitively as the man approaches. His body is wrapped in graying rags and scavenged trousers. The ritual mask adorning the lad's head speaks to a different lineage. One that the human locals have always despised.
The boy is a Tusken Raider.
And perhaps it is for that same reason that the man and the boy are able to find commonality as they begin to talk. A shared plight. Obi-Wan was no friend of the locals himself. His very presence here threatened war and mischief. After all, he was a fallen soldier from a forgotten war. A Jedi with no Order.
In these days of exile he's taken to having no name at all. The man with no name has no glory.
In turn, the boy shares his name with him: Benn. In the Tusken language of Ghorfa he says it means springwater. A reservoir. Hope.
A simple hope. The ability to carry on, day after day. The strength to endure a hard life and nothing more.
The man decides to do a simple thing. The thing all people should strive to do with each other on a world as harsh as Tatooine.
He befriends the boy.
. . .
Later that day, Benn says he wants to take him to a place. The man with no glory decides to take the boy to a place as well. To save him from these harsh desert wastes.
They settle to do both, but the boy's place is closer.
Side by side, they march through the desert. Benn asks him about many things along the way, things that the man hasn't had to think about in years. He decides to tell him of the War, of far off worlds with impossibly lush forests, of places where machine clashed against man all across the galaxy.
He's sure to leave out the harshest parts of that clash. Makes no mention of the revolutionaries that were cut down by his own blade, of the genocides he had to lead in the name of the former Republic.
On a world like Tatooine, guilt often trumps shame.
The death the man once spread is nothing compared to what the boy finally shows him at march's end. Ash has mixed with the sands here, hiding evidence of the bodies that once burned and the slaughter that took place. Half-burnt huts line the craterous wreck all around them, echoes of a long-ago society.
It doesn't take the man long to realize there was once an encampment here. A village of Tusken people, same as the boy. That village is no more. What remains now is almost beyond words.
Benn tells him what became of this place. Ten years ago a young man came to the village. A Jedi Knight, same as himself. Yet this Knight did not come to uphold the Jedi values. He came to slaughter. End the life of every man, woman, and child that called this place home. Without remorse, he cut them all down.
All, except for one.
The man's eyes fall down to the lone Tusken beside him. A boy without a mother, a father, or a tribe to call his own.
It doesn't take long to realize the same hate that took the Jedi Temple from him also stole Benn's home from him. That it was the same man behind both acts. The demon that now haunts him in his dreams. The demon he created. His own student. Skywalker.
The realization sends him crashing to his knees, hands groveling at the ash-ridden sands. The man with no glory does the only thing he can in that moment.
He weeps.
In broad daylight, he weeps.
. . .
In the peaks far above them, the twin suns threaten to crest. Womp rats howl in the canyon ring all around, thirsty for rain. Sand whips at random, snaking a path all its own.
Against this backdrop, the man walks beside the boy.
His mind has all but been made up at this point. He will take Benn away from these wastes, take him to a safer place. After what the demon has done, it is the only thing he can do.
A trail of remembrance helps guide their march home. Other Tusken tribes have drifted through what remains of the encampment area, left desert flowers here to remember their dead by. The brown sands are alive with emeralds and sapphires, gems of a botanical kind.
No laurels line the trail, though. Never any laurels.
As the man and boy drift further from the mass grave, the man remembers he has another duty to take care of. His sworn duty.
The Larrs farmstead is not far from here. The man with no glory always makes sure his treks stay close to it. If he had his choice now, there would be no need to go. But his better instincts take over. He knows it will only take a second to do what needs to be done.
Benn is happy to accompany him to the farmstead. He says it's the first time humans have willingly interacted with him since… well, since a long time. To accompany a man, let alone a Jedi Knight, means more than the boy can ever communicate in his rudimentary understanding of Basic.
The man with no glory is happy too. For once he can bring along someone that can better relate to the prize he's been assigned to protect. A friend for a friend.
On a different world, Benn and Luke Skywalker would have been the best of friends. Would have raced the mazes of Beggar's canyon together and gone down to Tosche Station.
But such hospitality was not to be.
The man has never lost sight of the irony of his mission. To destroy one Skywalker he has to protect another. To topple one regime he has to champion another. He supposes that same dichotomy is reflected in every aspect of Tatooine life. Raiders raided, farmers farmed. Suns set on life, and rose on death.
And yet, maybe there was a way to break that chain. With a Tusken willingly marching next to him, all of Tatooine was starting to seem a different place. The place it used to be.
Even still, as the man approaches the boundaries of the homestead he cautions Benn. Tells him to stay back and wait.
Farmers were welcome here. Ex-Jedi and Tusken Raiders were not.
One step after the next, the man trods the familiar path by himself. Follows the streaks of water bubbling up from deep underground, making the floors mud-ridden.
The farmer known as Owen has grown weary of him over the years. Although Owen was Luke's Uncle by birthright, that didn't make him worthy of the same respect. All the caution in the world has only turned him more jaded and prone to violent outbursts.
The moisture farmer has earned the same mentality as the Tusken Raiders he despises so much, even if he will never admit it to himself.
At the end of the line of vaporators, the man sees Owen standing. He is clad in the same raggish threads all farmers wear, a rifle strapped to his back. His face holds a gruff expression chiseled in by the desert sand.
Their conversation begins the same abrupt way it always has.
"Where is the boy?"
Owen does not so much as stiffen at the voice. The man with no glory's appearances have become commonplace at this point.
"Where do you think?"
The man casts his senses down to the desert hovel, expects to see Luke playing with his toy ships. In turn, he shakes his head.
"He is not there."
"What?" Owen stands up, finally turns to acknowledge him. "What are you talking about? Where the hell is he then?"
They scour the empty plains together, united for once by a common goal.
In the clearing the man just left, they both see it. Benn is playing tag with Luke, the boys running endless circles in the heat of the sun.
"Luke!" his uncle howls. In his eyes is the rage of a thousand harvests lost to raiders, of a father and stepmother that were taken away by their mortal enemy. He doesn't see two boys playing, he sees a Tusken Raider chasing down his little boy, priming him for the kill.
Owen is raising his rifle before the man can even think of stopping him. He lines his shot with the ritual mask that separates one boy from another by cultural identity.
In a split second, the trigger is pulled and another life is taken. Where one boy stands another has fallen.
The chain remains unbroken.
The man with no glory says nothing in the fallout of it all. He resolves to do the only thing he can. He marches back up the clearing, takes Benn's lifeless body away from Luke's shock-ridden face, and he leaves.
By the time he's gone the sands have already swept away the blood.
. . .
For two days and two nights, the man walks through the Jundland wastes. He is as aimless as he has ever been. Equal parts lost and dehydrated.
The wrap around Benn's body never leaves his hands. He refuses to let go of it.
He has marched for so long that the skies begin to share their sympathies with him. The water comes in drops and drizzles, then full-blown showers. Before the man knows what is happening, the valley is flush with rain, the streams ankle-deep.
He realizes there's only one place that's safe from the coming desert flood. The man returns to the Tusken Camp that Benn showed him.
Every step back up its mud-ridden peak requires a show of strength he no longer has. His arms and legs work in scatter-shot dissonance: poking and jabbing at whatever bluff they catch. One moment, he is marching up the mudslide. The next, he is tumbling down its incline. His body flails one way, while Benn's crashes in the other, a lifeless, muddy mess.
In that moment, the man is ready to give up. Ready for the showers to wash over him and cobble his body with dirt.
Lost in mud and sand and tears, he vaguely becomes aware of another presence standing over him. Cognizant of the fact that a spirit has stayed with him all this way. His Master's spirit.
Fists tightening in the sands, he resolves to do the most important thing a Jedi can ever do.
He tries again.
By the time he stands up and reaches the camp's summit he's finally ready to acknowledge Benn for who he is: the final member of a forgotten tribe. Another group eradicated at the hands of the demon that haunts over all of them.
The man does the only thing that seems right. He buries Benn with his family. Just like him, they have become a tribe without memory, a people without glory.
It's for that same reason the man decides he will carry on the boy's name. When he arises from the Tusken graveyard, he is Benn Kenobi. Now and onward.
As he begins the long march back down the trail of remembrance, he notices something is different. The flower buds they spotted earlier have sprouted, spurned on by the desert showers. They're all the same colors he remembers seeing, the emeralds and sapphires, rubies and golds. Yet he sees one new flower sprouting among the bunch.
There, in the distance, a laurel is growing. An act of nature as defiant as the people that once lived here.
Benn smiles in spite of himself. One day he hopes that the twin suns will shine on a better Tatooine. That it will shine on better men, with better hearts. With humble farmers and harmless raiders.
For now, the laurel will have to do.
End