Luke split the heavy-duty flimsi into two neat pieces, one slightly larger than the other. He no longer needed to measure because he'd done this many times. He began to cut X shapes, notching and folding and tucking until the sheets formed a small box with a lid. With the edge of the scissors, he made a shallow cut on his arm and dipped the point in his blood. The finished drawing wasn't as neat as it ought to be, but clearly it was two bright red, wobbly circles.
He repeated the process until he'd made four boxes. On two he drew a disk that was a crude representation of the Millenium Falcon, whose engines thrummed under his feet. For the fourth one he picked up blood with his fingernail and flicked tiny droplets for stars, all that remained of Alderaan.
He lined up the boxes, pulling the Tatooine Suns close to him. Leia sat across the table, silent, watching him. Or maybe she was watching nothing. She really needed a Box. He pushed the fourth one toward her. She handled it gingerly, careful not to smear scarlet across the lid. Her gaze lifted with an unasked question.
"It's Memory Box for you," Luke said softly.
"Oh." She opened it, then looked at him uncertainly. "Thank you."
"You store your Memories in it so they don't get in the way. You can take them out when you have time to remember. The bloodstars are for Alderaan."
Han swiveled from the control panel and tried to look tough. "You need a helluva lot bigger box for Alderaan."
Chewie snarled a scold at him, and Han shrugged, unrepentant.
"I know." Luke stared at his hands. There was sand under his nails. "But there's not enough flimsi. Here's one for you and one for Chewie."
Han tossed his on the console. "Did you get a knock on the head, kid?"
"Stop that," Leia snapped. Her voice softened. "Is this a Tatooine custom, Luke?"
He nodded. "Some people have two because they want a Good Memory Box and a Bad Memory Box. But I figure you can't have one without the other, so why waste flimsi to make a second one?"
What fuel had burned midnight-dark? What created huge thunderheads of black that I saw long before I got to the homestead? I stood there shaking while they roiled like a wind-storm over skeletons too hot to touch, too fragile to be real, decorations for HorrorNight. I couldn't bury them, I couldn't get inside to get a shovel, everything was scalded. Pawing at the sand didn't work; I wasn't fast enough to prevent it from caving in on itself. I did the only thing I could: on my knees I said the Sunsets Blessing, asking the Desert to keep the remains safe until someone came. The flame-driven clouds would bring neighbors from miles around; later the Tuskens would come, then scavengers to strip cooling metal. Right then I couldn't do any more because Ben was waiting. The guts of the farm were still afire, I couldn't search for clothes or food or weapons. Maybe I should have tried anyway. Maybe my Memory Box was safe, and I'd have somewhere to put these thoughts. Maybe Aunt Beru and Uncle Owen's Boxes were safe. I should have found everyone's old Boxes and kept their Memories alive forever. Grandpa Lars, Grandma Shmi, the baby who only lived a few days… their Memory Boxes are gone. The only Memories left are in my head, and I don't have room to keep them all.
He took the lid off his new Box and looked inside. It was empty, so he tucked in the last couple days. Every part of his entire life fit in the Box because most of his life was gone. His room. His home. His Join the Academy and Travel the Galaxy recruitment posters from the years when he'd thought that would be fun. Old toys. Baby clothes that Beru hid in her bottom drawer. Shoes. Tools. Plants that had been carefully cultivated. Smells of dinner cooking, seasoned by those same plants. Desert air at dawn, damp and leaden. Gone was the handmade quilt from his bed, colors of sand and rock, made from supply sacks that still bore faded printing. His journal, secrets that he hadn't wanted anyone to read. (No one would read them, now. He barely remembered what he'd written.) Beru's journal that she picked up every night after dinner. (What did she write about, stuck there on a desolate farm where she'd made a home for the three of them?) Did Uncle Owen have a journal? Luke had never seen him writing, but he could imagine. (Too much work. Beru looks tired. Damn kid wants to leave before Harvest. There'll be hell to pay. Got two droids today.)
He shouldn't remember all that because his Memories had burned into ashes. He stared at his shirt sleeves. They were dirty, and he didn't have any other clothes. His whites were torn and stained. He supposed when they got to this Rebellion, they'd give him dead people's clothes to wear.
He hoped dead people didn't store Memories in their pockets.
"The Empire caught you above Tatooine." He looked at Leia. "You sent the droids."
"Yes, to General Kenobi. My father knew he lived there. It was a miracle that Artoo found him. With an entire planet to search, I mean," she added awkwardly. "It was lucky that the escape pod landed so close."
In my experience there's no such thing as luck, Ben said in his head. He put that thought in the Memory Box. He wasn't certain if it was Bad or Good so it was lucky that he only had one Box.
"My uncle bought the droids from Jawas."
No one responded. They didn't understand.
Leia's father sent her to find Obi-Wan Kenobi on Tatooine. Leia sent the droids planetside. The Sandpeople found the droids. Uncle Owen bought the droids. Artoo ran away to find Kenobi. Threepio and I ran away to find Artoo. Ben Kenobi found all of us. Everyone died but me.
It was a perfect sequence. Maybe it was like a mathematical equation, but he'd never quite understood mathematics, so maybe it wasn't.
Still, it all pointed to one source: if Kenobi hadn't been on Tatooine, none of this would have happened.
Your father's lightsaber. He wanted you to have it when you were older.
He was a good friend.
The only logical reason for Ben to be on Tatooine was that his dying friend asked him to watch over his son. Watch from a distance, evidently, because Ben hadn't been in his old Memory Box so he hadn't been around often enough to make a memory.
It's my fault that Ben was there.
But Darth Vader killed my father, so it's his fault.
It's the Empire's fault. It's everyone's fault. It's no one's fault. Everything just happened.
Those Memories seemed more like ideas and they were spilling out of the Box, so he clapped the lid on it.
"Coming up on Yavin Four. Need the clearance code, Your Highness."
There would be time later to look at the Memories. If he wanted to.
# # #
Tatooine homespun was on his bunk. He sat down next to them. He'd tossed them aside when he'd changed into a pilot's jumpsuit. Someone had taken the time to fold them neatly even though they were filthy. He wondered who cared enough to do that. Maybe they assumed he'd die and thought he had a family who would want his clothes.
Biggs must have had clothes. Luke didn't know which footlocker was his. Biggs wouldn't mind if he took a few things before they were sent home to the Darklighters where they would never be worn again, just hung carefully in a bedroom that would become a shrine full of Boxes.
But Biggs was big, his clothes wouldn't fit.
Biggs. Bright orange, half-hug, shared promises that there would be time later to revive old Memories and make new ones. He wondered if the mustache had burned off when Biggs blew up.
He wondered if people on the Death Star had mustaches. Or Memory Boxes. If not, it was too late to make them. There wasn't enough flimsi in the galaxy. Anyway, they were dead, and dead was dead, and so were their Memories. Like the first womprat he'd killed when he was four and the Tusken Raider when he was eleven. All those Memories were gone.
He wondered if Ben's Memories were gone. He wondered if there was a Memory Box in Ben's house. He wondered if he'd ever go back there and look. I'm never coming back to this planet again.
Some officer told him it was Darth Vader's oddly shaped TIE fighter that had killed Biggs. He didn't know if that was true, but if it was that meant Biggs was Vader's fault, too. I wasn't there or I'd've been killed too, like Ben said. Now Vader wants to finish the story about the droids and the Death Star plans and the burned homestead. He wants the One Who Escaped.
He wondered if Vader had a Bad Memory Box, because he certainly couldn't have a Good Memory Box.
Although if he did, what would be in it?
"These might fit you." A pilot tossed clothes on the bunk. "Ty won't be needing them."
Luke picked up a jacket that shone like two suns. A black shirt that smelled like someone he didn't know. Pants that looked new, boots that he would polish. He was right. Dead People Clothes. Still, better than wearing a flightsuit to the Award Ceremony.
"They say you turned off your targeting computer." The man had shaggy hair and intense dark eyes. "Why?"
Use the Force, Luke.
"Didn't need it. I'm a sharpshooter. I never miss my target."
"Yeah, right. Or maybe you were just lucky." The man snorted, shook his head, and left him to dress.
There's no such thing as luck.
# # #
It felt good to be a hero and get a big medal that was smaller when he held it in his hand. The Princess smiled at him, but he thought her smile at Han was bigger. The happy little droid chirped and rocked like he wasn't the one who'd gotten Luke into the mess that killed his family.
It felt like everyone he'd known was dead. But that wasn't possible. Tatooine was still there. Tatooine wasn't Alderaan.
It had been right to take Biggs to the Award Ceremony because he would've gotten a medal if he hadn't had to die instead. Luke shoved the Memory of Biggs safely into his Box.
He stretched out his legs on the floor and leaned his head back against the edge of the bunk, listening to Han's liquor-fueled bragging. "Do you really think that was Vader?" he interrupted.
I have you now, someone who wasn't Ben said.
"Hell, yeah! Nobody else could fly like that! I got 'im though! Blew him to smithereens!" Han took another swig, then clicked his tongue against his teeth. "Or maybe not. I think he bounced."
"Bounced!" A pilot whose name Luke didn't know laughed and drooled spit from the side of his mouth. "Darth Vader bounced!"
"Hah! He's bouncin' through the Death Star asteroid field! We finished him off!"
The Death Star Asteroid Field. The Alderaan Asteroid Field. "I don't think he's dead." Luke studied the bottom of the mug that was stained with every beverage that had ever been in it. If he was dying, he would have screamed because he was on fire and I would have heard him like I heard Ben because he was a Jedi like my father before he turned to evil.
"If he was even alive in the first place. Probably some kind of droid. Cyborg maybe."
A student of mine until he turned to evil.
Darth Vader was a Jedi. Like Ben. Like my father.
"He does stuff though. Magic stuff."
"That's just bullshit propaganda, smoke and mirrors!"
Darth Vader rotated on a turntable, wrapped in a column of fire, flames growing taller and taller until they flared far above his helmet, reaching for the stars. The homestead burned around him, but he never moved. Never flinched. Never died.
"He betrayed and murdered my father," Luke said. "A long time ago. They were Jedi."
It sounded dumb, but no one laughed. After a few moments, Han cleared his throat. "Who says?"
"Kenobi. They were his students. He was a Jedi Knight."
The room was quiet, like no one wanted to disagree with him because he had a Medal. Or maybe they believed him. Or maybe they felt sorry for him because he lost his family like they felt sorry for Leia because she lost her planet. But then he remembered that they didn't know. They all knew about Alderaan, but he hadn't told anyone about his family. They were strangers. He didn't know their stories, and they didn't know his.
It was too soon. He didn't want to make more Memories to store in the Box.
"I remember General Kenobi."
Luke's head snapped up and he rubbed his eyes to better focus on a man with lines across his forehead and silver dusting his cropped hair.
"General Skywalker, too."
General? "My father was a general? In the Clone Wars?"
The man nodded and began talking. Luke reached behind him under the bunk and stealthily pushed off the lid of his Memory Box, so it could capture stories about his father.
He wished Darth Vader standing in a column of fire wasn't taking up space in his Memory Box. Vader wasn't a Memory and he didn't belong there.
But Luke didn't know how to make him leave.