IX. Help Me

The terrible truth struck him as they crossed a stretch of desert that had no name. Artoo chirped and whirred excitedly nearly all the way home, much to the annoyance of his one-armed counterpart. Raised in the core, Ben had once had a good ear for Binary, as far as humans went. After twenty years, though, even basic concepts were difficult for him, and he could piece together the context of their mission only from the protocol droid's frustrated protests.

"This joint will never be the same, you know."

Curious beep, said the astromech.

"It's no use; the coupling's bent. My left arm will pull off like some modular attachment for the rest of my days. Oh, this is all your fault!"

Disgusted whirr.

"If it weren't for this 'mission' of yours, we'd be safe in our new home."

Interrogative whistle, directly addressed.

"I don't have a sense of adventure. I have a primary function. And every faulty directive you follow makes it harder to perform."

Beeps—too rapid-fire to follow.

"And I was the protocol droid to a captain. And very close, mind you, to being assigned to a princess on a diplomatic matter of surpassing importance. Thanks to your meddling, I'm to become an overgrown interface module for farming equipment."

Ben's heart dropped in his chest at the mention of the princess as the little astromech whistled on. There could be no doubt, now.

"That is not for us to decide, Artoo. We only follow our programs."

More beeps—system beeps. Something about Artoo's primary function.

"Yes, well, I'm going to regret it. And so will you, if you're not careful."

Dismissive buzz.

"Just you wait."

The protocol droid—surely the one assigned to Padmé all those years—was as talkative as ever, even missing its arm. With a growing sense of dread, Ben took in all he could from them. He knew, by the time they had reached the hut, just who was aboard the vessel, and what had likely become of her. He knew, too, more clearly than ever, into whose hands she had fallen. There was no question; he was going after them.

I told you, said the Dark Side. I told you that you would endanger the boy. You cannot escape your destiny. He will suffer if you bring him with you. He will suffer if you leave him behind. But then, you've always wanted him to suffer—

"Enough," Ben said so sharply that the others heard it. Luke looked over, concerned.

Perhaps the suffering of Anakin's child is part of your revenge, after all.

"Turn here," said Ben. "We'll hide the speeder around back. You can't be too careful with the scavengers in these parts."

He faltered climbing down from the speeder. For just a moment, so briefly that it could have been the blazing sun, the strength left his arms and he used the Force to catch himself. There was no question; the boy would have to come. But how to turn his mind, now, after discouraging it for so long?

Tell him everything—no—almost everything.

Blame his uncle.

Give him the saber—Anakin's saber. Yes. Tell him that his father meant for him to have it. That following in his father's footsteps was his destiny.

But what if he did? If he followed too long in Anakin's foosteps—would Obi-Wan Kenobi fail again?

If Vader—Vader!—turned him to the Dark Side—how many more innocents would Obi-Wan's hubris destroy?

It didn't matter, in the end: Artoo's hidden message did its job all too well. Leia was beautiful, unspeakably beautiful, a little copy of her mother. And beauty alone was more than enough to draw the interest of a teenaged boy.

She looked nothing like Luke, of course. The farm boy was tall, lean almost to skinny, with his father's mop of shaggy blond hair, his strong jaw, his cheekbones, his way of walking. Even his whinging complaints sounded like Anakin's, a generation removed. With only the meagre tool set in Obi-Wan's hut, Luke reattached C-3PO's arm with natural, intuitive mechanical skill—just like his father.

But Leia was nothing at all like the impulsive, headstrong Anakin. She was Padmé's child, through and through.

Until the astromech's projection, until Leia's pleading eyes stole the breath from his old lungs and the sureness from his spirit, Ben had perfected the story he was about to tell. Subtlety and guile were weapons of the Jedi arsenal, and in his old age, he had come to master them all. He smiled at Luke, and offered him the gift of a father's weapon, and waxed philosophical on the nature of the Force and the Jedi. Luke's bright-eyed questions took him back to painful memories, but he had spent long years preparing himself for these moments. The words flowed from him eloquently, and Luke's questions were exactly those he had anticipated.

"How did my father die?" he asked. There was no great joy in the answer Ben had prepared, but neither was there great sorrow. It was too far from the truth for that. Just the same, it was a gentle conversation with few surprises— until she appeared on the table and looked up at him, and all his Jedi training fell away.

"I saw part of a message—" Luke warned him. It was not enough time to steady himself.

She was small but never meek, possessed of a quiet authority and a gentle voice. He had not seen her, not a holo nor a picture of her, since the birth. But she was unmistakable, even fully grown. Her round, doe-eyed face—Padmé's face, nearly—looked up at him with fear and earnest hope. Before she spoke, before she said a word, he knew that he would forsake every oath he had ever made to anyone. He knew that he would find her; and, if need be, he would die—or kill—to protect her. Only then did the Jedi Master understand Yoda's words. Only then did he know his true peril.
"General Kenobi," she began. "Years ago you served my father in the Clone Wars…"

The kindly smile, so carefully crafted, was gone from his face. For the first time in many years, he was frightened, and he could not hide it in his eyes. He had faced Jedi-killing cyborgs, his own apprentice, his own mortality. And none of them had shaken him like her. He fought for composure.

"Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi," she said.

There was no escaping the terrible weight of that name.

Obi-Wan… is Anakin all right?

"You're my only hope."

And in an instant, too brief an instant, she was gone.

He would take the droid to Alderaan, as she asked. And then he would find her.

And find Vader.

"You must learn the ways of the Force," he said to Luke, his quiet smile returning, "if you are to come with me to Alderaan." As expected, the boy was not so easily swayed—at first. Luke shrugged the powerful suggestion off without realizing it. The Force was strong in him, after all.

"Alderaan?" he said incredulously. "I'm not going to Alderaan; I've got to get home."

But Ben Kenobi had learned patience, and with patience came true mastery. And all manner of secret and subtle things could be done with that.

It took several hours, in the end, for Ben's will to have its effect. More than mere hours, it had taken the distance of a tragedy even he had not foreseen. Imperial stormtroopers were not known for moving so quickly; in truth, Ben's mind had been elsewhere and he had failed to think of how quickly they could reach the homestead. But the seed of Ben's powerful will had been planted, and even in the gifted but undefended mind of a Skywalker, it was only a matter of time.

With his world in ruin, with nothing left to hope for and every reason to fear, Luke might have sworn himself to a dozen destinies, standing there in the smoke and stink of the burned farm. Free at last, he could have shipped out to the Imperial academy after all. If his rage took hold of him, he could have taken his new weapon and gone after the local garrison who killed his family. If a boy's fear and uncertainty seized him, he could have fled to his circle of friends among the skyhopper crowd, drifted from home to home until he made sense of his life. Or, possessed of his father's cleverness and ingenuity, he could have exacted a terrible vengeance against the Imperial death squad by trading his priceless lightsaber to the Hutts in exchange for Hutt justice.

He could have done any number of things. But there had been a gentle hand on him as he stood upwind of the smoke. A master's hand was always gentle, when it could afford the time to be.

Obi-Wan waited patiently by the sandcrawler as the fussing protocol droid threw the Jawa bodies onto the fire. It was late afternoon when the speeder shot back over the horizon. Ben's guilt wrestled with his pride; he knew then the terrible tragedy that had struck, and felt keenly for the Lars family. But there was something dark in him, now, and it was growing. In spite of his Jedi discipline, Ben relished the thought that for all their strength, for all their unnatural, uncanny gifts in every skill and Force power under the suns, the Skywalkers were unstoppable outward aggressors—but lacked the inner strength, the true, unshakeable, quiet resilience, of a Kenobi.

"You must learn the ways of the Force," he had said, "if you are to come with me to Alderaan."

With an energy untempered by his grief, Luke leapt over the side of the speeder and ran to Ben's side.

"I want to come with you to Alderaan," said the boy. "I want to learn the ways of the Force and become a Jedi like my father." He said the words earnestly, urgently, as if they were the only thing he had ever wanted.

Ben nodded, as if hearing those words for the first time, as if he hadn't been expecting the folded suggestion to take hold in time. But he returned to the speeder with a heavy heart, already knowing that after years of exemplary conduct in the Jedi Order, after striving his whole life toward the mastery of the Force, there was more power still to be had in his anger.