VIII. A Long Time
Ben was so shaken by Owen's words that he left without the condenser. He spent the afternoon in the Anchorhead cantina, but there was no information to be had. None of the spacers who had come in past the battle had made it in from Mos Eisley yet. He'd have to go up there if he wanted to learn more, and he knew he couldn't risk it. It would be a few more days before traffic trickled in with firsthand knowledge. How many ships, he wondered? And what had brought them here?
You know what brought them here, said the Dark Side. It is your destiny.
"I have chosen another destiny," said Ben. "The boy is my last hope."
You know why you left your whereabouts with Bail Organa. The war is still in you. Revenge is still in you. And how you must relish your chance for revenge. You have endangered the boy to get it.
"The boy is safe!" said Ben. "Darth Vader will not come down to this planet again. He cannot. He cannot see us, he cannot track us. He is weaker here than anywhere in the galaxy." His hand went to the bundled lightsaber at his hip. He'd started carrying it again.
"And if he comes," said Ben, "I will finish what I began."
Good, said the Dark Side. But he will not come. You must go to him. You must face Darth Vader again.
Ben looked to the sky. The flashes of fighting had long since stopped; in truth, they had been over in a matter of minutes. But the ship was there; he could feel it. And in the clearness of the open desert, he could make out, on the edge of his powerful senses, a presence that was all too familiar.
"He will not come down," said Ben. "And I will not endanger Anakin's child. Not for revenge. Not for anything in this galaxy."
Yes you will, said the Dark Side. For just one thing, you will endanger him.
Ben hitched a ride with a trophy hunter as far as Pika Oasis, and began the walk from there. In the blazing afternoon of the second day, he took shelter in a rocky Jundland cave. He was not far from home when he felt, sharply, the pangs of a feeling he had hoped never to feel.
Pain. Fear. The boy was in danger.
There was no avoiding it now. The Drought had hardened the Sand People. They would kill him, if the twin suns didn't.
Darth Vader was, in the moment, the least of his worries. The Tusken Raiders would kill Anakin's boy—Padmé's boy. Here and now.
It was only the memory, distant though it was, of Anakin's massacre of the Raiders that stayed his hand. There were few enough of them—and though his joints ached constantly now and his sickness grew, he felt lighter, stronger at the thought. But they, too, had weathered the Great Drought; they had lost many of their young, and were as wretched and pitiful a bunch of scavengers as he had ever known. It troubled him how strong the Dark Side had become, how clear its urgings were to him. It would have given his failing body the strength to kill them all, if he had drawn on it. But there were other ways.
Diligently he had practiced the whooping call of the lesser krayt dragon, which echoed so well in the rocky hills, and he put it now to use, bellowing at the height of his lungs as he clambered over the rocks. And though he hated to admit it, there was a much darker fear deep within him, and he let that fear wash over them as he came. They scattered like leaves before him, terrified, squealing. But they fled with their lives.
The boy was laid out flat on the floor of the dusty gulch. He was unmistakably Anakin's son. The long, lean body; the unruly mop of blond hair. Ben took his wrist to search for a pulse, but there was no need: the Force coursed so strongly through the boy that there could be no question he was alive. Ben laid his hand over the boy's brow, sensed the flow of that current, directed it to the wound on the side of his head. It was then he heard a noise of recognition—a noise at once familiar to him, even after all this time. There could have been no question this matter concerned him directly now. But his delight at seeing the old, familiar droid after so many years warmed his smile. For a moment, the weight of the dark side left him.
"Hello there," he said. "Come here, my little friend."
R2-D2 beeped his concern for the boy.
"Oh, don't worry," said Ben. "He'll be all right."
The boy—Luke, she had called him—was already stirring. The Force was wickedly strong in him, like his father.
With the care he had held in check for too long, Ben helped the boy sit up, led him to a stone, and asked him of his business in the desert. Luke gestured to R2.
"I think he's searching for his former master," said Luke, "but I've never seen such devotion in a droid before. He claims to be the property of an Obi-Wan Kenobi…"
Spoken aloud, the name hit him hard, in the gut. He tried to hide it.
Obi-Wan…
He kept his calm, tried to conceal the impact. But her voice haunted him still.
"Obi-Wan Kenobi," he said. He let the name out easily, as if to convince himself the words had no power. "Obi-Wan…now that's a name I've not heard in a long time…a long time."
He felt very small and old, then. Very far from that name.
"I think my Uncle knows him," said Luke. "He said he was dead."
"Oh, he's not dead," said Ben. "Not yet."
Distantly, across the canyon, he heard the hunting shouts of the Tusken Raiders, regrouping and preparing to come in force. The charade could hold no longer.
"Of course I know him," said Ben. "He's me. I haven't gone by the name Obi-Wan, since—"
Obi-Wan…there is good in him…I know…there is still…
"Oh, before you were born," he lied. He remembered the boy, remembered cradling his tiny body. He was the firstborn, there in the medical bay… no. No.
This is your moment, said the Dark Side. Vader awaits you.
Ben brushed the thought from his mind—or tried to. But Artoo had not come alone to bring his past roaring back. He had brought a protocol droid, a gold-skinned, roadworn Cybot 3PO unit—and Ben did not need to hear its voice to recognize it. It was Padmé's own protocol droid. The one from Mustafar…no.
Ben muttered something about getting indoors, though the worst of the sun was behind them. He needed to think, needed to make sense of these unsettling messengers. Why had they come to him? And why, first, to Luke? Was it ordained? Was it the will of the Force?
The pain in his chest returned as he bent low to hoist up the protocol droid. The Raiders had torn one of its arms off; in Luke's hands, held beneath his mop of wavy blonde hair, the golden arm looked so much like Anakin's prosthetic.
Ben shook the thoughts from his mind with determination and hoisted the droid into the speeder before slumping into the passenger seat himself. Stunned, speechless, and fighting a hundred old sentiments—light and dark—it was all the Jedi Master could do to endure the long ride in silence.