FIC: The Last Hope - Obi-Wan, Luke - G
TITLE: The Last Hope
AUTHOR: agentj / agentjedi
STATUS: complete
DATE WRITTEN: October 2005, February 2006
CATEGORY: Challenge (imadra_blue's Secret Valentine's Day Challenge 2006)
CHARACTERS: Obi-Wan (Ben) Kenobi, Luke Skywalker
TIMEFRAME: Saga: A New Hope
CONTENT WARNING: none
SUMMARY: On their way off Tatooine, Obi-Wan remembers.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Phil Brown, Uncle Owen to Luke in the original film, died Valentine's Day at the age of 89. Now I wish I had written a love story between Owen and Beru. I guess Luke thinking about his family will be the next closest thing.
WORD COUNT: 810
Luke looked wistfully along the dusty streets as he and Obi-Wan sat at the eatery. A sad, painful ghost flitted across the boy's intense blue eyes as the elder watched Luke pause to take what was likely going to be his last look at the only home he had ever known.
"I dreamed every night of getting off this dust-ball." Luke's voice wafted in the swirling wind, filled with longing and regret. "And now I'm finally leaving." His sad eyes returned to the bowl of stew before him. He stabbed at the gelatinous substance without much intention to actually eat it, despite Obi-Wan's insistence that they stop for a meal.
"It doesn't seem right, somehow." Luke's voice was small, as small as he suddenly looked, with his shoulders of his small young frame slumped over.
Inwardly, Obi-Wan shivered at the uncanny resemblance the young man had with his father. Luke was far more fair-haired, but likely because the boy had spent the entirety of his childhood under the twin suns of Tatooine. Although somewhat lighter in colour than Anakin's, Luke's eyes still burned with the intensity Obi-Wan had once seen in his former apprentice. The angular cheeks, the pouty lips...Obi-Wan looked away, casting his senses through the nearby streets in case they had been followed or were being watched.
"I should have buried them." Luke's voice was stronger now. Obi-Wan turned to face Luke's determined but broken spirit head-on. "...Or something." The younger man's head bent forward again as he returned to his meal, or at least the stirring of it.
Obi-Wan's gnarled hand reached forward, and his dry skin touched Luke's own. The boy looked up again, his eyes still yearning to understand the cataclysmic changes that were taking place in his life. "You did the right thing, Luke, leaving them there." Obi-Wan's voice rasped from the two decades of exposure to the heat and the endless hours he had spent shouting down his own demons in the desert. "If the Imperial Storm Troopers had been ordered to return, for whatever reason, it would be best that they think your aunt and uncle were not missed."
Luke diverted his eyes again, finding comfort in looking at the frayed edges of Obi-Wan's ancient cloak. "Ben," Luke requested in a voice so small, Obi-Wan had to strain in the Force to hear it, "Could you tell me more...about my father?"
Luke's crystalline eyes met Obi-Wan's once again in an expression of pure innocence, longing, and hope. The elderly gentleman's countenance took on a look as if he had discovered a blaster wound in his belly as he sat back slowly in his chair. Obi-Wan blinked against the harsh light of the twin suns, and his expression softened as he valiantly pushed a smile through his lips.
"He was a brave man," Obi-Wan recalled, his eyes reflecting inwardly as he spoke. "And stubborn, too. He defied my orders and refused to leave me behind on more than one occasion." The smile finally reached Obi-Wan's eyes as he chuckled at a long-forgotten memory. With a sigh, he whispered, "I owe him my life."
If Luke caught Obi-Wan's misspoken verb tense, he didn't show it. Instead, the boy's face was filled with wistfulness of secret fantasies, unfulfilled. "I knew," he whispered mostly to himself, "I knew that he was more than just a spice freighter pilot. I felt it."
Luke's eyes sought out Obi-Wan's again. The two men locked gazes, and for a lingering pause, charged static leapt between them. Obi-Wan felt the power of untapped energy behind the lad's eyes, unconsciously using it to coax the truth from the depths of his soul. For the briefest of moments, Obi-Wan wanted nothing more than to pour his heart to the boy, to let go of this lie, tell him the truth, and beg for forgiveness as he unabashedly cried on the youth's shoulder.
The twenty years of Jedi discipline, thirteen years of mastership and nearly twenty more years of solitude gripped Obi-Wan's senses. He smiled with the gift of hope and squeezed Luke's shoulder. "We best get a move-on. I doubt that Corellian pilot will wait long for us, two thousand credits or no."
Luke nodded and stood. A commotion caught his attention across the street in the marketplace. As Luke turned his attention toward it, Obi-Wan watched the boy and remembered again another man thousands of light years away. He thought of the eagerness and innocence of that once little boy and the tragedy that lead both he and Luke to this place.
Luke looked back to Obi-Wan and shrugged. "Well, Ben, I guess I'm ready to leave this place. Let's go."
Obi-Wan nodded. As Luke turned to go, he sighed inwardly. Luke was, indeed, the last hope-to save the bravest man and best friend he ever knew-Luke's father.
About the Story
I had started writing a Luke and Ben story after reading someone on LJ who wanted to read stories about them (citizenjess? stella_belli?), but I couldn't think of where to take the story. Then imadra_blue announced the Secret Valentine's Day Challenge, and two ideas came to mind. The easiest was to take this one and make it for the challenge. I still ended up submitting it late! I really like the beginning bit, but it sort of loses steam and peters out at the end.
I honestly think Obi-Wan never intended Luke to kill his father. I mean, if that was the intention, what was that big smirk about in Return of the Jedi? Just making nice? "Sorry about the cock-up, old man?" Obi-Wan spent nearly two decades in the desert preparing for something, and I don't think it was just to learn how to turn into a little blue Force ghostie. That took all of-what?-ten minutes to do? Considering at the end of Revenge of the Jedi, Obi-Wan had lost his faith, and by A New Hope, he was oozing it, I think a lot of soul-searching and re-finding his faith went on. Considering how gun-ho Qui-Gon was for Anakin, and that he turned out to be correct in the end about the boy, I think Qui-Gon convinced Obi-Wan that Luke was the path to Anakin's salvation.
Originally posted at Jedi Cupid journal.