Back From the Future: Episode VI The Clone Wars - Ariel_Sojourner

Luke Comes Full Circle and Decides to Chart his Own Destiny

CLXI.

Being on Tatooine is bizarre. In some ways it is painfully familiar.

Nothing to see.

Sand.

Heat.

Thirst.

Squalor.

But things are different too. Freedom has come to the desert world.

Luke has fulfilled his father's last (first) wish.

He has traveled all night to reach the Lars homestead. He knows Padme (he never knew his mother), and Anakin (Father/not!Father), have visited, but right now they are in Mos Eisley, preparing to travel back to Naboo. His aunt and uncle are the only ones home.

(It is disconcerting to feel them through the Force, at once so familiar and comforting and also just . . . not.)

He is not here to visit the past, though.

He is here to lay his father to rest.

The last time he was here, the homestead was burned (gutted, he'd felt gutted), and he'd buried his family's remains with his bare hands and a broken piece of scrap durasteel. He navigates the deep dark before the dawn towards the family grave plot and kneels before a familiar stone.

"Hello, grandmother," Luke whispers, reaching out to touch the name inscribed, nearly worn away by sand and wind. "I brought your son back to you. He missed you. He loved you. He never forgot you." He reaches into his tunic and pulls out a small black bundle tied with a bit of cord. There was precious little flesh to reduce to ashes after his father's death, but he had wrapped it carefully and has kept it close to his heart for months now.

Luke digs a shallow hole in the sand atop his grandmother's grave and places the bundle inside, covering it gently. "You're together, now and always. Sleep in peace, Father. No more dreams. Tatooine is free now. It's free at last."

Luke looks up, expecting, hoping to see . . . something. He has completed his father's plans, honored the first promise his father likely ever made. Surely now there will be some sign that his father is at rest, not lost in the Dark. Surely now with Tatooine free and the physical remains of mother and son finally reunited, there will be some hint in the Force of what Luke is supposed to do.

But all is silent as the first light of dawn breaks over the horizon. Taking in a shuddering breath, he forces himself to rise and step back and then step back again, to leave his father behind, tear himself away from the very idea of him that has filled Luke's dreams for as long as he can remember.

(My Father is truly dead).

He makes himself turn away, turn towards the domed homestead in the distance.

Luke dares not look back, but he finds he cannot go forward either. There is a terrible paralysis that comes with grief and Luke feels like he is drowning in it. There are no plans for him to follow. He cannot bring himself to walk towards Tosche Station to where the speeder is parked. He cannot bring himself to knock on the door. What can he say even if he did? There is no place for him here.

(Luke fears there may be no place for him anywhere).

He and his father had worked for months to create a new present and from it a new and better future. There was never going to be a place for him or Vader in that future. They were only ever going to have each other and now Luke doesn't even have that.

Unthinkingly, his feet lead him along familiar paths and he heads up to the south ridge where the same vaporators he worked on for years still stand, harvesting moisture from the air drop by drop. He cannot remember how many times he fixed these temperamental things, half fried by the burning suns and clogged with insidious sand. His hands know what to do and Luke finds himself mindlessly cleaning out the trap and tightening the cables, making the machine that much more efficient, eeking out just a few more nano-liters of higher grade product.