[It's not easy sheltering a kid from his own history, from any mention of the Jedi or the Force, from the galactic government, and from that singularly persistent neighbor who keeps trying to lure the boy back into that bloody mess he'd been born into. It was a heroic effort, but obviously didn't end well. (Inspired in large part by that one awesome quote from the Kenobi show, which we have repurposed in a more believable context.) Also, Jabba the Hutt unwittingly plants the seeds of his own demise.]
19 BBY, Tatooine
"Owen? Owen Lars? This is General Obi-Wan Kenobi, a friend and associate of your stepbrother, Anakin Skywalker. I'm afraid something terrible has happened."
Owen hadn't been completely ignorant of his stepbrother's wartime exploits with General Kenobi and the other Jedi, but HoloNet searches cost both time and money, and the war was a long way from the daily grind of life on Tatooine. Only brief glimpses came through from the wider galaxy, and somehow—considering the violence of a Jedi's lifestyle and the angry melancholy that had clung to his stepbrother the one time they had met—Owen wasn't surprised to hear via direct message from General Kenobi that Anakin had come to a bad end.
Maybe it was unfair to judge Anakin by that one meeting. It had been a bad time for all of them.
"He left a wife who has tragically just died giving birth to their son. I realize it must be a shock, and indeed very short notice, but I am compelled to ask if you can assume responsibility for the child."
Anakin's mother, Shmi, had been Owen's stepmother for five years before her lost son returned. She had been a special source of happiness in their lives, especially to Owen's father, Cliegg, knitting the household together with the longsuffering kindness and compassion she had cultivated during her years as a slave. Shmi had always promised that the Jedi would let Anakin return one day, that Owen would finally be able to know him and that they would be great friends. She had often praised Anakin's selfless nature, his cheerful heart, his indomitable hope and determination to make the most of life. But the Jedi never did allow Anakin to visit. They never allowed him to send messages. Owen had watched Shmi carry the lonely hope for some kind of contact for years, prattling into a video diary for Anakin's eventual benefit, pouring all her energies into her new life with her new family and trying not to feel abandoned. Owen's initial impression of the whole Jedi Order had necessarily been rather unfavorable.
"I must warn you, there are those who will be seeking the boy with hostile intent. He must remain hidden, especially from agents of the new Imperial government. We have no wish to endanger you or your wife, but it is a risk."
Anakin Skywalker had not seemed cheerful or hopeful when he had finally found their moisture farm three years ago. Owen had thought him sad, surly, and resentful, but none of them had been at their best. Shmi had been kidnapped by Tusken Raiders, and the rescue efforts had resulted in nothing but the deaths of several men in their community, a lot of collateral damage, and the loss of Cliegg's leg. They had begun to despair when Anakin had suddenly appeared from Mos Espa in company with an exotically beautiful woman who introduced herself simply as Padmé. Was she the mysterious wife who had died bearing their child?
Anakin had gone out in a formidable mood, scouring the desert alone until he had apparently found his mother barely clinging to life in a Tusken camp. He had returned with her body, a palpable darkness around him. He and Padmé had stayed long enough to see Shmi buried before the pressing concerns of the Jedi—of Obi-Wan Kenobi, in fact—had called them away again. They had never returned.
Cliegg was dead now. He had never fully recovered his spark after losing both his wife and his leg. Owen maintained the farm now with Beru, his wife.
It seemed the whole Core was crumbling, the war was confused, and the Republic had officially spasmed into something calling itself the Galactic Empire. The Jedi were being massacred everywhere as enemies of the new regime, Anakin Skywalker just one casualty among many. Out of all that ruin came this one precious life, an innocent child who knew nothing of the chaos he was meant to inherit. Shmi's grandson. Owen felt no particular obligation to Anakin, but Shmi would have taken the child in a heartbeat, and Owen thought he owed her that much.
More than that, he felt he owed it to Beru. Owen had initially been reluctant to potentially bring any kind of danger or scrutiny onto his household, but one look at Beru's face had told him he really had no choice. Their marriage had been a childless one, and perhaps there were medical solutions available somewhere, but trained specialists and the money to pay for them were both in very short supply in their world. There was no way he could refuse her this perfect infant sent from the stars.
Beru had immediately launched into a tizzy of preparation, clearing out the unused junk room for a nursery. She and her sister Dama had eagerly combed Anchorhead together while they waited for Kenobi's arrival, borrowing or buying whatever small luxuries a baby could expect in that desolate corner of inhabited space.
"His name is Luke Skywalker. He's a very special child with a powerful destiny, and he'll be a great Jedi someday."
Not if I can help it, Owen had thought. He hadn't said anything in the moment, but he was rankled by the casual way the Jedi seemed to reserve the right to repossess the child at any time. If they were surrendering custody of Luke, they had no hope of getting him back, not while Owen had anything to say about it, not after what they had done to Anakin and Shmi.
Kenobi finally arrived, riding a lumbering eopie through the evening gloom. Beru rushed to meet him, but Owen held back, not eager to exchange pleasantries. The Jedi surrendered the child without a word, and left immediately. So much the better.
Beru returned to his side as the suns cast them in fading orange light, a drowsy bundle in her arms and a radiant smile on her face. She was plainly smitten already, and even Owen recognized an immediate surge of paternal feeling at the sight of the boy. It must be something about that innocent little face, so helpless, so trusting, so unfortunate already.
You're safe with us, Luke, he thought, for as long as we can manage it.
Raising a child had a way of changing the way one perceived the passage of time. Everything was more complicated and the days often seemed to drag on forever, but at the same time each day was so different and Luke seemed to grow so quickly that the years slipped away like dust in the wind. Owen felt like he had barely processed each stage of childhood before Luke was on to the next. Now the boy was a precocious four years old, playing with his toys in the sand in the shade of a vaporator as Owen tried once again to coax the Treadwell back to life.
"Owen," Beru called from inside the house. "Owen! The perimeter alarm. Southwest straightaway."
Southwest . . . That meant a clear line of sight from where they were now. Owen whipped up his macrobinoculars and scanned the horizon.
There was indeed something at their perimeter fence. It wasn't Tuskens or wandering banthas, but a lone figure hooded and cloaked against the elements, just standing there. Watching.
"Beru, take Luke inside," Owen said. "I'll take care of it."
"But I wanna see, too!" Luke protested, scrabbling up out of the sand and shading his eyes with his little hands. "Who is it?"
"Nobody," Owen insisted. "Tramps, scavengers. Beru!"
"Come on, Luke," Beru said from the doorway, "you can have some pallies while I cut them up."
Luke drooped in disappointment, but seemed to accept the compromise. "Okay." Pallies weren't just for special occasions, but they were a treat all the same.
As soon as the rest of his family was safe behind closed doors, Owen fired up the landspeeder and drove it out over the flats to meet their intrusive neighbor. He was not surprised to recognize Obi-Wan beneath that hood, weathered by the harsh climate, now known as Ben Kenobi the crazy old hermit beyond the Dune Sea. Apparently he had never left, had no intention of leaving, and still entertained designs on Anakin's son.
"Hello, Owen," he said from the wrong side of the fence. There was a battered swoop bike nestled beneath the nearest rocky crag in the distance.
"Kenobi," Owen replied in kind, climbing out of the speeder and coming to face him. "What are you doing here?"
"Just keeping a watchful eye on young Luke whenever I can spare it."
"Thank you," Owen said stiffly, "but I'd rather you didn't skulk around here. We're trying not to draw unwanted attention, remember?"
"Small danger of that at present," Kenobi assured him. "I've been watching. In any case, I was hoping you might let me start spending time with the boy. It's high time he began his training."
Owen was immediately indignant. "He's four."
"That's the Jedi way. It's best to give them some understanding of their talents while they're still young. The longer you wait, the harder it becomes."
"I don't want that life for him," Owen said, his voice flat.
"You may not have a choice," Ben persisted, his eyes glistening in the shadows of his hood. There was no threat in his voice, just brutal candor. "I may not have a choice. Anakin was immensely powerful in the Force, more than any Jedi I have ever seen. I suspect Luke may be the same."
Owen imagined Luke's bright eyes gone as dark and hollow as Anakin's had been the last time he had seen him, a miserable shell of himself, all that was left after the Jedi had remade him in their own image. It was a hideous thought. "Didn't do him much good in the end, did it?" he observed pointedly. He stepped forward as far as the fencing would allow. "So long as that boy lives under my roof, I absolutely have a choice. The 'Jedi way' ruined his father and got him killed, so if you think I'm ever going to let you anywhere near Luke, you've got another thing coming."
Kenobi's expression would have turned stony if he hadn't seemed so disappointed. He clearly wanted to continue pleading his case, but seemed to recognize that it was hopeless. "Have you told him about his father?"
"He hasn't asked. Like I said, he's four."
"He will ask. What are you going to say?"
Owen didn't have an answer for that yet, so he didn't offer one. He simply glared a final warning, then turned back to the landspeeder.
"It's a long journey back across the Dunes," Kenobi observed, almost plaintive. "I don't suppose I could presume upon your hospitality before I go."
His ploy was obvious, and Owen could not help but grudgingly admire his determination. But instead of inviting him back to the house, Owen retrieved his emergency water and ration packs from the speeder and thrust them through the fence into Kenobi's chest. "I don't want him to see you," he explained, his tone subdued but almost poisonous. "I don't want him to know you. Take yourself back to wherever you've decided to live, and stay away from my family."
With that he turned again, climbed into the speeder and wheeled it about, racing away and leaving the Jedi hermit in a cloud of dust.
The conversation with Kenobi unsettled Owen for several days. He knew the Jedi meant well, but they were at cross-purposes, and he didn't like the thought of him just waiting out there for an opportunity to snare Luke in his web of pain, violence, power, and destiny. It didn't help that Ben had been right. Luke did ask about his father over supper, almost as though he could feel the subject hanging in the air, and they had been caught without a prepared answer. As casually as possible, Owen admitted that his name had been Anakin Skywalker, and decided that he had been a navigator on a spice freighter. It was a common enough profession, illegal and undocumented, and far away from Tatooine.
Later, returning from a routine inspection of the vaporators, Owen saw Luke sitting out by the family graves, tracing the names on the headstones with his finger. He couldn't read yet, though Beru had begun to teach him. The little cemetery contained Owen's grandparents, his father, Uncle Eldern . . . and Shmi Skywalker.
That unsettled feeling flared up in him again as he was vividly reminded of Anakin kneeling on his mother's grave moments before he had left Tatooine forever. Luke was starting to resemble Anakin in many ways, with his sandy hair and blue eyes, but brighter, happier, kind and affectionate. Maybe that was Anakin as Shmi had remembered him, the Anakin that might still have lived among his family had the Jedi not gotten their claws into him.
Maybe he was getting paranoid, but with Kenobi skulking around, the fewer questions they had to answer the better. The past was dangerous.
Owen removed the headstones the next evening after Luke had gone to bed.
It didn't work. Despite not having an ounce of guile in him, Luke was a sharp kid, and he absorbed every stray nugget of information they let slip, even some they didn't.
Days after Owen had removed the gravestones, Luke overheard Beru explaining to her sister Dama and her husband Sam that Owen had removed them in order to obscure Shmi's burial site. Luke, unobserved until then, innocently asked who Shmi was. Surprised, Beru admitted that Shmi was his grandmother before she could think better of it, negating the whole purpose of removing the stones in the first place.
Beru confided to Owen later that Luke had asked if someone was watching him from a distance. She had dismissed it, but a chill ran up Owen's spine as he thought of Kenobi's lonely vigil in the desert, wondering if the intuition was somehow his contrivance or instead a manifestation of Luke's latent powers beginning to bud.
Other things began to happen as Luke got older. The boy knew things he had no business knowing, and when he put his mind to it he could be uncannily aware of the location of any object in the house. The most notorious example was the screwdriver incident. Beru had expressed some frustration as she searched high and low for her short-handled screwdriver. Owen, passing through the room, had watched Luke—just six years old—visibly withdraw onto another plane, and then declare that the screwdriver was under the couch.
It had chilled him to the bone.
You may not have a choice, Kenobi had said.
You may not have a choice.
YOU MAY NOT HAVE A CHOICE.
Owen had exploded into a blind rage that was completely disproportionate to the situation. It had terrified Luke and rooted Beru where she stood. He had decreed a punishment and banished the boy to his room, still seething with anxious resentment after he had gone.
"Owen," Beru had hissed, finally recovering herself. "You're going to traumatize him!"
"If that's what it takes to keep him alive," Owen had quipped back. But that was too uncomfortably honest. He had then tried his official rationalization on for size while Luke was sequestered. "The only way he could have known is if he put it there."
Beru had glowered at him, recognizing the baseless excuse for what it was.
Not for the first or last time, Owen cursed the Jedi and whatever otherworldly power lurked in Luke's blood. He could feel it stalking them, the beast that Kenobi called destiny, but Owen didn't want to acknowledge it. To acknowledge it would be to feed it. Maybe they could starve it by ignoring it. The idea sounded imbecilically simple, but it was the only strategy he had left.
Owen secured the front door as best he could, then turned back to the casual mess Jabba's goons had made of the kitchen. The whole household was shaken, and he tried to put on a stern face as he joined Luke and Beru in picking up enough for them to have supper. Fortunately, the stew had been locked in the pressure cooker, and none of the mercenaries had wanted to risk an embarrassing injury.
Unfortunately, some degree of extortion was to be expected when the only law in the region was a Hutt crime boss and his empire of ruffians. This was a new low though. The water tax Jabba already skimmed off their profits was burdensome enough without having to bear the expense of a "protection" scam. Something must have gone seriously—and hopefully temporarily—wrong in the Hutt's business ventures for him to be so cash hungry. Not wanting to risk their farm being "accidentally" incinerated, Owen had paid the ransom at blasterpoint, and the thugs had gone.
Beru was on the verge of tears as she set the table. Besides being understandably upset by the invasion of their home, she knew Jabba had just wiped out all the profits they had expected from that season. They had been counting on that money to replace some of her gasping appliances, supplement Luke's education, maybe even install an additional vaporator or two. Now there would be nothing. They would be lucky to break even, and nobody wanted to face the prospect of debt.
They sat down to a silent and sober meal. Owen grimly resolved to appreciate it, knowing it would probably be the last meat any of them saw for a while. Beru began to cry.
Luke sat perfectly still, his face set in a scowl, simmering with aggressive frustration. That boy loved Beru, and he hated to see her suffer. "Somebody should teach them a lesson," he fumed. "I'll bet they'd think twice if they got a few blaster bolts in the face."
Perhaps it was only natural, but Owen didn't like what he was hearing. It smacked of that hotblooded Skywalker recklessness he had been trying to curb for so many years, and those eleven-year-old hormones weren't helping matters. "And what would stop Jabba from sending twice as many of them to burn us alive next time?" he asked.
Luke had no answer, but simply glowered over his plate. "We just have to sit here and take it, then?"
"I don't see that we have any choice," Owen said. "Even the Darklighters aren't going to risk challenging Jabba outright. He's too well supplied, too well funded, too well equipped, and he'd blast you as soon as look at you. But don't worry too much," he concluded, digging into his stew and trying to tamp down the rampant anxiety in the room. "A dead farm is no good to him. He won't drive us completely under."
"What's the good of not being a slave if they treat you like one?" Luke demanded.
Owen returned his dark look. It wasn't Luke's fault that they hadn't discussed the gritty details of his family background. "After you've tried living as a slave, maybe you can tell me," he suggested. "There's nothing we can do, so let's not dwell on it any more."
"Well, somebody should do something," Luke insisted, too agitated to leave it alone. "Who's gonna care about us if we don't? There's nobody to report anything to but other Hutts, and the hot end of a blaster is the only frakking thing they understand."
"Luke!" Beru quipped, objecting to the vulgar language. "Not in this house!"
"That's enough," Owen agreed, uncomfortably reminded of that murderous look he had seen on Anakin's face. It was grotesque on someone so young. "Drop it."
"Don't tell me you don't think everyone wouldn't be better off around here without him! Jabba has to come out sometime. All it'd take would be somebody with a good eye and enough firepower to—"
"Luke, stop it!" Owen roared, "or you'll end up just like your father did!"
The outburst landed like a concussion grenade, silencing everyone. Luke's eyes nearly bugged out of his head, shocked that his uncle had broken the cardinal rule of the household. Owen regretted saying it, but somehow he felt it needed to be said. There was no taking it back now.
"Alright," he said, breaking the awkward silence, his voice calm but brittle, "when we're done here, I want you to bring in the droids so we can shut down for the night. Morning will come the same way it always does, and we'll still have our work to do, just like yesterday, tomorrow, and the day after that. We do what we can, we take care of each other, and we survive. Don't worry about the rest."
Whatever else Kenobi might be, Owen thought, he was certainly very persistent.
He had never again asked Owen directly for access to Luke, but somehow Old Ben always managed to be there when the boy and his friends ran into trouble. Kenobi had escorted Luke back home on several occasions in years past, and consequently the two were known to each other, at least on some superficial level. Owen supposed it was inevitable that they would meet eventually, but he didn't like the feeling that his control of his own household was slipping.
Now here he was again. Luke was with him, alive but downcast, and plainly deprived of the method of transport he had left with.
"Luke," Owen began, his voice stern but flat. "Is the skyhopper a complete wreck?"
"No, sir. I can salvage it."
"Mechanical failure, or pilot error?"
"Pilot error."
"All right. Get inside, you're grounded."
"Yes, sir." He wasn't surprised.
Ben and Owen stared at each other until Luke was well out of earshot. Owen could recognize that Kenobi had hardened toward him, and that too had probably been inevitable. There were a lot of hard people on Tatooine. It was simply the effect of the desperate and thankless existence the Jedi had chosen.
"Just a miracle you happened to be in the right place at the right time?" Owen asked, incredulous.
Kenobi offered a bitter smile. "You might say that."
Owen knew there was nothing miraculous about it. Kenobi had been haunting Luke for fifteen years, waiting for his opportunity. "I thought we talked about this."
"Would you prefer that he be dead?" Kenobi asked, his eyebrows crawling up his creased forehead.
Owen ignored the biting rhetorical question. "What did you tell him?" he demanded. They had been alone together for several hours, and Kenobi had tried to take advantage of such opportunities in the past.
Ben frowned. "Nothing," he said, "although I could have told him everything. I'm still hoping to bring you around amicably. Luke must be free to choose his own path, and the sooner the better."
"No." Owen leveled a firm finger at the old Jedi, warding him away from his home like a bad omen. "I appreciate what you've done for him, but I want you to stay away . Don't ever speak to him again."
Kenobi was visibly exasperated. "Luke is heir to an extraordinary destiny, Owen," he presumed to remind him. "He has a place and a purpose in the fate of the broader galaxy, far beyond any of us."
"His place is right here," Owen retorted bitterly, bristling like an anooba, "and his purpose is to stay alive long enough to enjoy whatever peace and happiness we can give him!"
He had expected a fight, or at least an argument. Instead, Kenobi seemed mildly surprised, and his eyes softened. "You really love the boy," he said, as though it were a shock, "like he's your own."
The remark was kindly meant, but it angered Owen, viscerally. He and Beru had raised that boy from a sprout, cared for him, nursed him, comforted him, schooled him, taught him everything he knew. After all that, did Ben expect he would be no more important than a piece of furniture, a bit of clutter they could rearrange out of their lives as though he had never been? It instantly confirmed every unflattering opinion he'd ever had of the Jedi and their inhuman indifference.
He stepped forward again, forcing Kenobi to step back. "He is my own!"
The suns would be rising soon.
Owen stopped in the predawn twilight, staring out over the empty flats. He was usually too busy charging around the farm to indulge in idle introspection, but there was a chill growing in his bones that had nothing to do with the cold desert morning.
Luke wasn't settling into the routine on the farm the way they'd hoped he would. He'd been raised to it, lived by its daily rhythms, knew the place inside and out, but somehow he still didn't belong to it. There was a drive in him that was desperate to broaden his horizons, tackle greater challenges. Life on Tatooine was an enormous challenge by itself, but the monotony of it didn't suit him. He was a dreamer by nature, always restless, never content with the world he saw around him, drawn inexorably toward the war and chaos of the larger galaxy by a force beyond their control. Lately it seemed he spent more time with his dreams than with reality.
Owen wondered if that was their fault. The silence and the secrecy that cloaked Luke's family history had not proven to be a harmless void, but rather fertile ground for his young imagination. Maybe they should have made up their own stories, told him something of what he'd always wanted to hear, stories about Anakin's reckless and ultimately unfulfilling life on that spice freighter, about how his father had always wanted to settle down on a farm of his own when he had saved enough to buy one, and had hoped his son would do the same. But maybe that would have also been a pointless exercise. There was no way to know now. In the absence of any facts, Luke had invented a myth of his own as vague as it was naive and aspirational. And all his dreams pointed toward the stars.
Owen shivered in the dark. The time was coming when decisions would have to be made. He could either allow Luke to pursue those dreams, or he could crush every last one of them. Neither prospect was very appealing.
"Speeder's ready," Luke said, bounding up the stairs and lingering at Owen's elbow. He held one of Beru's breakfast tarts between his teeth for a moment while he pulled on his insulated cloak against the cold. "Where did you want to start today?"
"Head east along the south range," Owen suggested. "I think we might be having some trouble with those units in the southeast corner."
"Alright. I'll bring the toolkit and see if there's anything I can do with them."
"Take the blaster rifle and keep your comlink on."
"Sure."
He was a good kid, Owen reflected. Luke might fuss and moan a bit, but in the end he did his work and didn't make trouble. The problem with kids was that eventually they grew up and wanted lives of their own. Luke was already eighteen, a grown man by Tatooine standards. Words could not express how much Owen wished he could be content where they were, maybe find a wife as he had, start a family, know the satisfaction that came of building and maintaining a homestead with his own hands. But that seemed unlikely.
That seemed very unlikely.
Owen turned back down the stairs and into the house. He was going to need one of those tarts before he faced the day.
Beru was puttering around the kitchen, tidying up the first mess and preparing to make a second. The whole place smelled like baked fruit. "You seem unusually grim this morning," she said, no doubt trying to perk him up.
"I'm just worried about Luke," Owen confessed, helping himself to one of the tarts. "Same as always."
Beru smiled in that tolerant way that made him want to believe that all would be well in the end. She had always seemed more at peace with the idea that they might have to let Luke go at some point. "He was asking this morning about the possibility of applying to the Imperial Academy on Prefsbelt IV," she said.
"Ugh." Owen stared blankly at the far wall, envisioning what a disaster that would be. "Can't let that happen."
"He's starting to lose his friends to the outside world, Owen," Beru observed. "He's not going to stop asking."
"I'll put him off as long as I can. Maybe the idea will lose its charm eventually."
"And maybe there'll be rain in the spring," Beru countered pointedly.
"I'm not trying to ruin his life, Beru," Owen growled. "I'm worried about him. After all these years of keeping him buried out here, you want me to let him walk wide-eyed into an Imperial military facility with a name like Skywalker? We might as well serve him up with garnish to the Emperor himself!" That chill wasn't going away. "We should have changed that boy's name the minute he got here."
Beru wasn't convinced. "I'll say now what I said then. His name is the only thing he has of his parents. He's a Skywalker by blood, and if his mother called him Luke with her dying breath, I'm not about to change it."
Owen scowled and took an aggressive bite. "All very romantic, I'm sure," he said, "but we're trying to be practical."
Beru sighed and began washing vegetables. "Maybe Obi-Wan will be willing to help," she suggested. "He's always been interested in Luke's welfare."
"That's a matter of opinion," Owen scoffed. "After telling Kenobi to pound sand for almost two decades, you want me to go ask for his help? Besides, Kenobi doesn't want Luke anywhere near an Imperial Academy; he wants to make him a Jedi. I'm not sure which is worse."
Beru turned from the vegetables and pierced him with a look. "We may just have to explain things to him," she said, knowing what a concession that would be after suppressing the truth for so long. "We may need to sit down with Luke and Obi-Wan and sort out the whole story. If Luke is going to make any decision, I'd rather he make an informed one."
Owen couldn't bring himself to agree, but he could grudgingly see her point.
"Owen," she persisted, wanting to be certain he understood her, "we may not have a choice."
No choice. There it was again. "I always have a choice," he growled, stalking from the room. But even as he said it, he realized even he wasn't convinced of that anymore.
The sand was hard and hot beneath their knees, and the suns beat down on them, but none of that was as uncomfortable as the barrels of the blasters that were occasionally thrust into their backs. Owen stared implacably ahead, Beru beside him, guarded by three Imperial stormtroopers while a whole squad of them ransacked the house. It was only by some miracle that Luke had disappeared from the property that morning and wasn't anywhere to be found. Owen wasn't going to worry about where he was so long as he stayed there.
Those damn droids. He had thought they looked too new to have been long on Tatooine. These troops didn't even know about Luke. After all those years of trying to hide Luke from Imperial eyes, it was the damn droids that brought them there.
The squad leader returned out of the house, and their guards prodded them to attention again. "Who else lives here?" he demanded in his dead, filtered voice.
"Nobody," Owen insisted, but even his own ears weren't convinced.
"Sir! There's a boy's bedroom, recently occupied."
"What about your son?" the squad leader demanded.
Beru stifled a sob, trembling and almost hysterical but managing to hold herself together. She tried to inch closer to Owen, but was roughly shoved for her trouble.
"He's gone," Owen snarled, impotent defiance the only shred of pride he had left.
"Does he have the droids?"
"I don't know." That wasn't strictly untrue.
"Where has he gone? Which spaceport?"
Owen scoffed, the absurd question annoying him despite the grim hopelessness of the situation. "He wouldn't know his way around a spaceport," he said. But at that moment, Owen wished to hell he did. He was starting to believe Luke was on his own now, and he couldn't help feeling like he had failed him.
"Lord Vader," the squad leader said, apparently speaking into his helmet's comm unit. He had closed the circuit, but he was so near that Owen could hear his muffled voice. "The Jawas sold a protocol droid and an astromech to these moisture farmers, but both droids are gone." A long pause. "Owen and Beru Lars, sir. They say they don't know where the droids are, but it looks like a landspeeder is missing from their garage."
Owen eased closer to Beru, wishing he could take her hand. He was tempted to curse the Empire, the Jedi, the Force, the whole wretched galaxy, but he didn't want to die that way. Beru met his gaze, terrified but almost resigned. It was that beast they called destiny. They had tried to fight it, but they had lost.
"Your orders, sir?" the squad leader was saying. "Sir? . . . Yes, sir? . . . Understood."
Ben, Owen thought, Ben Kenobi, I hope you're still out there. He needs you now.