The Jedi And The Warrior

Nothing Sacred Untouched

Tatooine was no place for a baby.

There were no soft surfaces, no hollows of comfort, no abundances to nurture a growing soul. Nothing but harsh and endless miles, deprived and unforgiving, and the scrape of vacant winds over gritty sands.

Even so, Beru Lars cradled the child in her arms, wrapped in white cloths so tightly he would have appeared simply the afternoon washing if Obi-Wan had not known better. She shielded the boy from the sand-pelting winds with her whole body, despite the fact that he fit in the space between her wrist and her elbow.

Crouched behind the sun-boiled rocks far above the farm, Obi-Wan watched them. The past weeks had ripped away everything he held dear, save that tiny life down below, and he did not mean to lose it.

Nothing sacred had been left untouched. But he refused to let the sky fall, not when it took ten times the effort to lift it back into blue.

The young woman looked... happy, holding that little boy. Luke, Padmê had named him — bringer of light, if his lessons still served him correctly. That should have been Anakin, but fate had seen fit to bring the opposite.

Obi-Wan had failed. Yet failure was fate's victory.

Luke Skywalker began to cry, an insistent wail that carried across the lifeless desert. Obi-Wan's nights since he passed the bundle into the arms of the young couple had been void of those cries, filled with only silence, a silence empty and profound and so much bigger than him.

Indeed, he wasn't sure if Luke was really just a fussy baby or a very responsive one, as he had only woken after Obi-Wan had already done so, after his dreams had burned with atrocity.

Beru, soothing the baby in her arms, glanced up to the cliffs where Obi-Wan crouched. Perhaps she caught a glimpse of him, a flash of white among dull reds and greys, because she straightened and went still. But Obi-Wan had already retreated behind the wall of the hill.

***

Tatooine's marketplace was a bustle of ill-will. Amongst the many stalls selling anything from spices to second-hand repairs, creatures from all over the galaxy squabbled for respect and money, for a place on this wretched planet, for a life worthwhile. Obi-Wan tried to remove himself from it, tried to look away from the slave boys darting between the stalls, tried not to think about how Anakin had grown up here, forged a life here.

If he could only have got there quicker, pulled that boy from this torment and saved his mother too, if he could only have done better, been better...

Those thoughts would not do. They came to him often enough at night, he would not permit them under the scorching sun.

Obi-Wan adjusted his hood over his face and moved on, weaving between squabbles and barters, making his way to his favourite part of the market. He did not much care for the more industrial side, though it had its uses if he were to ever need spare parts. No, he preferred the centre of the market, from which the scent of herbs and spices wended its way between the stalls, and all manner of foods were sold. The cuisines of every planet in the galaxy, it seemed.

Though delicious smells surrounded him, Obi-Wan made his way to the stall he'd noticed the last time he was here, selling food from Naboo. The vendor was a young man with dark hair, with the distinct curve of the nose that marked him as a child of Padmê's planet. Obi-Wan wondered if the Empire had driven him away.

He approached with the caution he must always now adopt, making sure his hood was securely adjusted. That was one of the few blessings of Tatooine; so often did the locals encounter strangers with secrets that no one batted an eyelid at his disguise.