Lars's Farm

Tatooine

"Boo mik, An' Ru," Luke Skywalker, age 3, demanded imperatively.

Beru Lars looked down fondly on her little nephew and said, "Just a moment, my dear. Play with your bantha until I am finished making the dough for bread."

For a moment, the child's nose scrunched in outrage, but then a big smile broke out and the blue eyes lifted soulfully to meet those of his aunt.

"Pay wit Rosco!" he said, waving his woolly bantha around.

"Yes, my love, play with Rosco," Beru agreed, turning back to finish kneading the dough. She had no idea where the boy had come up with the name Rosco, but that didn't matter. Luke adored his woolly bantha and, thanks to her most recent sewing efforts, the plushie had a tail again. Naturally a toy so greatly loved came in for its fair share of accidents, resulting in the periodic loss of horns, ears, and tail.

Fortunately, she was an excellent seamstress.

Her task finished, Beru quickly placed the dough in a pan so that it could rise.

"Boo milk?" Luke asked eagerly from his place on the floor.

"Of course, Luke," Beru answered, finding Luke's favorite cup (thankfully clean). Thirty seconds later, she held the now full cup up high and shook her head at her nephew. "No, my dear, you need to go sit at the table. If you try to carry your drink around, you will spill."

"O-tay, An' Ru!" the boy responded, grabbing his bantha and rushing off to the table outside the kitchen. Beru followed carefully, wishing to avoid a repeat of the previous day, when she had caught a sleeve on something and dropped Luke's cup of milk onto the floor. The resulting mess had been difficult to clean up, and blue milk was valuable.

"Tank u," Luke yelled when his aunt successfully placed the cup on the table. He eagerly reached over with two pudgy hands and carefully lifted the receptacle of blue goodness to his little pink lips. He drank and drank and drank, and Beru looked down joyfully. It was a blessing that the water vaporators were producing a decent crop, even more of a blessing that she and Owen had been gifted with this precious child.

Well, the rest of dinner wouldn't cook itself. She had to get back to the ...

She squealed in shock as she turned back toward the kitchen, because a man was standing in the living area, a man in his 30's, with dark blond hair and blue eyes, a man she had never seen before...

She cast around wildly for a something to defend herself with even as the dark clad intruder lifted placating hands. "Please do not be alarmed. I won't hurt you or the child, I promise."

Insensibly, she was reassured. Insensibly, because this was Tatooine, and she lived far away from most farms, and how did this man get here? What did he want? But somehow she believed him.

"Who are you?" she demanded, placing a protective hand on her nephew's shoulders. Luke was busily drinking his milk, but was gazing with rapt curiosity at the stranger.

"This is going to be impossible to believe, I suppose," the man said apologetically, "but I am actually your nephew Luke, from about thirty years in the future."

Beru blinked.

The man blinked back.

"You are correct," Beru said. "I don't believe it. Time travel is impossible."

The dark blond man smiled winsomely. "Everyone says that, but actually I've done it many times before. Let me prove it to you. I grew up with you and Uncle Owen, and I know the farm very, very, very well."

/

Owen Lars burst through the door with his blaster at the ready and gestured at the stranger sitting comfortably on the wooden rocking chair in the living room. "Get up, now!"

Beru, who had been seated nearby with her nephew in her lap, turned with alarm and cried out, "Owen, don't! It's all right!"

The stranger stood up obediently, his hands raised carefully. His right index finger twitched and suddenly, the weapon in Owen's arms was wrenched away and flew into the right hand of the intruder.

Belatedly, Owen's eyes dropped to the man's belt, where a lightsaber hung.

"Imperial!" Lars snarled, shifting to place himself between the invader and his family.

"Jedi," the man responded with an amused grin. "Calm down, Uncle Owen. Aunt Beru can tell you that I'm harmless enough. Well, to you, anyway."

Not surprisingly, this mode of address discombobulated the moisture farmer, allowing Beru to stand up with her nephew in her right arm and place a reassuring hand on her husband's shoulder. "Owen, it really is all right. As crazy as it sounds, this is Luke from 30 years in the future."

Owen stared at his wife, then turned to glare at the visitor. "That is impossible."

"It is, and it isn't," Beru said calmly. "Older Luke has quite proven it to me, Owen. He told me all kinds of things about the farm that only someone who lived here could know, about Shmi's grave site, and the place where escaped slaves hide..."

"It really is me, Uncle Owen," Luke Skywalker assured the man, and then added, "but it isn't your nephew, exactly, because we have changed the timeline. I hope that your little Luke will live an easier life than I did."

The child, who had been happily curled up against his aunt, wriggled down onto the floor and started running toward his older counterpart, only to stop at his uncle's command. "Luke, no! Do not go near that man! Go back to your aunt!"

The little one's lower lip wobbled pathetically but the child said, "Yeh, Unc'a Wen" and turned around to cling to his aunt's leg.

Luke Skywalker stared at the three year old child for a full ten seconds before shaking his head in awe. "How do you do that?"

"Do what?" Owen demanded gruffly, glancing around for another weapon and then realizing that it was pointless. The intruder was obviously a Force User. With a lightsaber.

"Your little guy just does what you tell him. It's a miracle."

Owen lifted superior eyebrows. "It is merely a matter of training. Luke knows that we are his authorities and that he needs to obey us."

Luke Skywalker grinned and shook his head. "Now, that is as adorable as your nephew is. I am father to three kids, and my twin sister is mother to four children, and three year olds are uniformly terrors. It is absolutely incredible that..."

"Twin sister?" Beru interrupted in shock.

Luke nodded, "Yes, Luke has a twin sister."

The moisture farmers exchanged stunned glances and Beru said in horror, "Surely not. Surely Ken...he would have brought them both to us?"

"Obi-Wan was afraid that together, their Force signature would be too powerful to miss by the Emperor," Luke explained helpfully, "so he split them up. I agree that from a Tatooinian standpoint, it is horrific, but the Jedi are weird. Don't you think so, Obi-Wan?"

Obi-Wan Kenobi, who had been peacefully milking his bantha when an unfamiliar Force signature had burst onto his consciousness like an ominous meteor, who had leaped on his fortunately functional speeder, who had raced to the Lars's farm in terror, now stepped into the living room to regard the unknown Light Sider with confusion.

"Who are you?" he demanded, fingering his lightsaber hanging from his belt. On the one hand, this man was obviously a Light Sider – on the other hand, where had he come from?

Luke sighed and rolled his eyes. "I am Luke Skywalker, from thirty years in the future."

"That's impossible."

"That's what I said," Owen said indignantly, relaxing a little. He didn't much care for Obi-Wan Kenobi, but the man was a living legend and could presumably cope with this weird stranger in his living room.

"Search your feelings," Luke suggested, with an ironic tone Kenobi did not understand, "you know it to be true."

Kenobi grimaced and obediently reached into the Force. Within fifteen seconds, he realized that the Force signature of young Luke Skywalker was indeed the nascent form of the Force signature of the stranger.

What in all the galaxies was going on?

"Ok, I believe you," Kenobi said reluctantly. "Why are you here?"

"Why did the Force send me here, you mean? Because this isn't my call, I want to make that clear. My sister and I, sometimes along with our respective spouses and progeny keep getting yanked out of our timeline and thrown here and there. It's exhausting."

Kenobi rolled his eyes toward the Larses, and Beru shook an angry finger at the Jedi. "So it is true? Luke has a twin sister?"

"He does," Kenobi admitted. "It was not safe to keep them together, so we separated them."

"You separated twins?" Beru asked in horror. "How could you?"

"As I said," Kenobi said, looking bewildered, "it was the only way..."

"Never mind that," Luke interrupted firmly. "Obi-Wan won't get it, Aunt Beru, because not only did he not grow up on Tatooine, but he did grow up in the Jedi Temple, which made the kids really odd regarding family relationships."

Kenobi glowered at the time traveler and opened his mouth to speak, only to shut it at Luke's next words. "For now, we need to talk about Anakin."

Obi-Wan looked anguished and Beru and Owen glanced at each other in confusion.

"Anakin is dead," Owen declared.

"No, he isn't," Luke said.

"Yes, he is," Kenobi insisted.

"Obi-Wan, don't be a jerk about this. I know you think that he is more machine now than man, twisted and evil, but he is alive and ..."

"Anakin is alive?" Beru squeaked in disbelief. "Kenobi told us he died during the Purges."

"Yeah, he didn't. He did have a big fight with Obi-Wan and fell into lava and get burned into a crisp, and now he is on life support. In fact, he is Darth Vader."

Owen and Beru thought they had exhausted their capacity for surprise, but this utterly gobmacked them to the point that they were entirely unable to speak.

"The man in that suit is no longer Anakin," Ben insisted, taking advantage of his hosts' silence. "He is machine more than..."

"No, don't say it," Luke said irritably. "I already did. It is not true. Why do you think he killed Palpatine?"

"Palpatine is dead?" Beru whispered, hugging her nephew closer. "The Emperor is dead?"

"I had forgotten how remote Tatooine is," her Alter Nephew said. "Yes, we killed Palpatine about 5 days ago. Now Vader, Luke's father, is Emperor."

"We?" Kenobi demanded.

"Emperor?" Owen yelped.

"Yeah, we," Luke said, turning his focus on Obi-Wan. "Leia and my wife and I all showed up in Vader's private quarters in his palace on Coruscant this time, for the first time, with all our miscellaneous progeny. Naturally, your Luke's father thought he was having a mental breakdown, but after we convinced him we really were time travelers, and told him that Palpatine killed Padme..."

"But he didn't!" Kenobi exclaimed.

"He did, Obi-Wan," Luke said sadly. "Leia and I have popped up at Polis Massa a couple of times and saved Padme; see, Vader was dying from the burns on Mustafar, and Palpatine tapped into the Force Bond between him and Padme and drained her life force to sustain Vader's."

Obi-Wan suddenly swayed a little and, with a gentle push with the Force, collapsed into a chair. "So that is why...the med droids did not know why she died, you know."

"I know, broken heart," Luke snapped irritably. "As if! Padme was a very strong willed woman; she was, of course, grieved and horrified that her husband turned to the Dark Side, but she wasn't going to fade quietly into the Force without a fight. She had infant twins to live for!"

"Can we please get back to the part about Anakin being the current Emperor of the known galaxy?" Beru inquired sarcastically.

"Not Anakin, Vader," Kenobi insisted. "He is not the man you knew..."

"Which is sort of true, and sort of isn't," Luke said. "The truth is that Anakin had a major Dark streak, and Vader has a major Light streak. The major difference is that Anakin tried to stick to the Light, and Vader clings to the Dark. I worked on healing him for a few days after we killed old Palps, and I managed a lot of good work on his lungs; he has, I think, realized that the Dark is no good for healing. But anyway, I think..."

He trailed away, his eyes focused intently on his small Other.

"I think maybe you should tell Vader where Luke is," he finally said.

"Are you insane?" Kenobi squawked. "He'll take him as an apprentice, or kill the boy..."

"I was thinking he would kill him," Luke mused thoughtfully, "not because he hates him, but because three year olds are usually so difficult, and he has anger management problems. I assumed I was a terror because my twins are, and they are three. But Uncle Owen, you said Luke is pretty obedient."

"Yes," Owen said in a hollow voice, staring at his wife.

Twenty seconds passed and Beru Lars's eyes filled with tears before she managed to say, "I agree. We need to tell Anakin about Luke."

"You can't!" Obi-Wan howled. "You can't! I realize you don't understand..."

"No, you don't understand," Beru snapped, "Anakin is his father! Luke is Anakin's son! They are family! How could you separate Luke from not only his father, but his twin sister! How could you?"

"It is necessary," Obi-Wan began, running his hand down his face. He was the Great Negotiator and had successfully managed to defuse planetary wars in his day. Surely he could convince a moisture farmer, his wife, and their Alter Nephew from the Future who was Darth Vader's son, though not this Darth Vader, that...

"He just doesn't get it," Older Luke explained. "The Jedi were raised to be emotionally constipated and poor Obi-Wan doesn't know any other way."

"I am ... not... emotionally..."

"You are too, Obi-Wan. Taken from your family as an infant, raised in the Temple, told that attachment was dangerous; I'm not blaming you for being an idiot about family ties, but at least have the honesty to realize that you are weird. Normal people care about their families. Normal people on Tatooine, a backwards planet with a lot of slavery and danger and loss, cling to family ties in a way you can't even fathom. My Obi-Wan lied to me and said that Vader killed my father and trained me to kill him, which was so annoying that if he hadn't been dead already, I probably would have punched him in the face."

Kenobi gaped at him. He was dead? Lied? Punched in the face?

"Do you really believe Anakin will treat Luke well?" Owen asked huskily, running an affectionate hand through his little nephew's blond hair.

"Well, I am going to pressure him to bring you along to take care of Luke, if you are Ok with leaving Tatooine. I mean, he is busy running the galaxy, so won't be able to be a full time parent. But yes, he loves Luke. He loves Leia, his daughter, as well, but I stopped in to see her before I came here, and she is rotten. Adorable and awesome, but rotten. I think we ought to give Luke's Father a little more time to mature, and Leia more time to mature, before getting them together. But little Luke here might well be the making of his father, and Anakin/Vader will be way better equipped when Luke starts wanting to fly ships at the age of five. You have no idea how obnoxious I was at that age, which is when I can remember clearly."

"You are mad, all of you!" Kenobi cried out, and actually clawed at his auburn hair.

"Obi-Wan," Older Luke said, sending a soothing wave of reassurance toward his sort of Alter Master, "my father had twenty more years of slavery to Palpatine and in the end, he sacrificed his life when Palpatine tried to kill me. With the old man dead, Luke's father is gonna shift to the Light way faster, trust me, especially when he has this adorable little ball of sunshine living with him. So what do you think, Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru? It is your decision."

"Make the holocall," Owen ordered, his voice resolute.