Fic: "Heatsink" -- Luke, Camie, pre-ANH to ROTJ -- 1/1
Title: "Heatsink"
Characters: Luke, Camie, other Tatooine inhabitants, Obi-Wan cameo
Setting: Two years pre-ANH through to the end of ROTJ
Word Count: ~8,000
Summary: Life's hard on Tatooine, and not everyone makes it out.
A/N: I've always felt poor Camie gets rather an unfair run as The Only Girl On Tatooine (TM). This is my attempt to explore her character a little more fully. It's not Luke/Camie as such, despite appearances (in case anyone is particularly worried).
X-posted to TFN and probably FFN eventually.
In the off-harvest season, Anchorhead’s afternoons stretched for an age, hot and bright and featureless. Dusk hung suspended as one sun, then the other, was pulled by increments down toward the horizon.
The uneven screech of Fixer’s oft-repaired door was piercing in the still air. The door seized, and Camie cursed. Fixer and Deak laughed, back inside the station, so she swore at them too, and gave up her attempt to meaningful slam the door, kicking it instead and striding out to the edge of the station’s raised slab. Hidden from other eyes, she allowed herself to sit clumsily, legs hooked over the platform edge, hands pressed to her eyes to contain her spinning head. The stone warmed the back of her legs through the fabric of her skirt, but she was protected from the still-punishing heat of the late-afternoon suns by the station’s long shadow.
The dry air prickled her skin after the coolness of the interior and brought water to her eyes. She wiped it away with the heel of her hand, breathing in the flat taste of the heat. She touched her hair, absently but methodically twisted a strand between her fingers, tucking it so that it appeared casually disarrayed.
The door squeaked, and she started, lowering her hand, tucking her legs under her. Footsteps scuffed to her left. A voice said, hesitant, “Camie?”
Her pose loosened and she twisted around, glaring sideways and up over her shoulder. “What do you want, Wormie?”
“Um,” he said. “Just seeing if you’re okay.”
“Go away.” She leaned her chin on her fist and scowled at the dirt.
He didn’t, instead moving closer and hesitating within arm span of her, then sitting a little further along. She didn’t say anything. The wind blew, strong and hot, and they both turned away.
Camie flicked grains of sand from her brown skirt. Luke said, “I don’t get it.”
“What?” she said, full of scorn.
He blushed red, but surged on. “Why do you put up with him?”
Camie gave her skirt a final brush with more force than necessary, glaring at the edge of the shadow. “I said go away.”
“It’s not my fault Fixer’s a jerk.”
“As if you know anything!” Camie said. Her voice sounded sharper than she thought. Luke eyed her, and she looked at nothing.
“He’s just a bully,” Luke muttered, under his breath.
“I don’t see you standing up to him when he makes fun of you,” Camie pointed out.
Luke flushed again, barely visible in the spreading gloom. “I do so.”
“You try to. You say the first thing that comes in your head and sound like a whining baby. ‘Shut up, Fixer,’ ‘Leave me alone, Deak’, ‘That’s not fair, Windy’.” She pitched her voice like his.
“At least I don’t just take it!”
Camie sighed. “They wouldn’t do it if you didn’t always run your mouth off when they tease you.”
He glared at her. “You do it too, half the time. And don’t try to act like you know better. You’re the same age I am.”
“Age isn’t the same as maturity, Wormie. And by the way, Fixer’s klicks ahead of you.” She gave him a pointed smile.
He frowned. She thought he was just brooding like he did, but then he said, “But what’s he got? This stupid station? That he doesn’t even own?”
“He will one day,” Camie said.
“So?”
Camie rolled her eyes. “We can’t all command the Imperial Fleet.”
He glared. “I’m going to have more than a power station, I know that much.”
She was listening for the door behind them, but there was nothing. Fixer’s voice was slurred now, drifting from inside, the laughter uneven. She blinked again. Luke was looking at her, indignant, intent. His hair was unevenly cut, his worn clothes slightly too small for him. “What will you have?” Camie said, but what she thought would come out as sarcasm came out as curiosity, or something else, something like wistfulness.
“I’m going to go to the academy and I’m going to be a pilot. In the Empire.”
Camie laughed and closed her eyes.
There was a whisper, as Luke shifted. “You could too,” he said. “You could be out there somewhere one day. You should be. I know you hate it here.”
“No one likes it here.” Camie said, as deflection, out of shock. She hadn’t ever heard him extend his delusion to anyone other than Biggs. And Biggs was already gone.
He sighed in frustration. He’d moved a little closer, his body warm in the cooling air. “I’m not talking about them. Why do you always do that? Quit faking all the time, Camie.”
“I’m not faking.”
“You do.” He looked annoyed, then seemed to remember to be shy and shuffled around again awkwardly, eyes darting to her hair and past and the other way.
“I’m a woman, Luke. You wouldn’t understand that.” Camie smiled, her eyelids half-lowered. She shifted toward him marginally in experiment, touched his knee.
He looked uncomfortable, almost in pain; embarrassed and intrigued and torn. He shifted from under her touch. “Stop it.”
She laughed, but was intrigued herself. Luke wasn’t really as much of a kid as she thought. She ran an eye over him, and realised that, seeing him every day, she’d missed noticing how the softness in his face had fallen away, how his shoulders had gotten broader. There was some fuzz on his jawline, even. His hands were narrow and roughened with working in the sun, stained with coolant and oil - mostly around the fingers, unlike the oil that covered Fixer’s hands, because Luke and his uncle fixed the intricate workings of the moisture vaporators while Fixer repaired the bunker full of converters that powered Anchorhead.
She listened for the door and heard nothing. Fixer laughed inside.
“What makes you think I would be suited for the galaxy?” she said, voice pitched low.
Luke eyed her, half-hopeful. “Because…” He breathed through his mouth, caught himself, flicked a look up and down and to her face. “Because you’re smart, and you’re pretty. Beautiful,” he amended. “And…”
“Lying,” Camie said.
He did look at her face then, gaze direct to hers. He said, “No.”
Camie smiled to herself, and then felt a moment of confusion. She leaned her toward him. He hesitated and gingerly moved toward her. She pressed her mouth to his.
He tasted like oiled sweetcakes and very cheap ale, his lips chapped, the pressure of his mouth very light on hers. She smelled faint sweat and the Wastes.
After a moment she withdrew. He looked at her like he’d never seen her before. She stood, lifted her chin and stood with her pose just so, and said, “See you later, Wormie.”
Voices trickled out into the night through the partially open door as she walked across the platform. She smiled, fixed her hair carefully, and went out into the falling night.
---
She patched things up with a very hungover Fixer the next day. Sitting on his lap in the coolest part of the station where he’d set up his workdesk, she caught a glimpse of herself in the burnished side of a medium-sized power converter. She brushed her hair back and tilted her head. “Do you think I’m pretty?”
Fixer, leaning back with a cool pack over his eyes, grunted. She elbowed him and he started. “Yeah,” he said. “ ’Course.” He sat up and eased her off his lap. She stood reluctantly. “My head’s killing me,” he complained, leaning back again.
Camie turned and looked at her distorted reflection. She ran her fingers through her hair, sweeping it wide across her shoulders. Her face looked pale, circles under her eyes from lack of sleep. She pinched her cheeks to give them some colour, and breathed out softly.
She saw Luke a couple of times with the others, and though he cast her uncertain looks from under his lashes, he didn’t say anything out of the ordinary to her. He and Windy beat Fixer sandsurfing with repulsors, and Fixer sulked for a week. He told her he suspected Luke had cheated on the course somehow because he’d managed to avoid a difficult dip in the chosen track that he wasn’t supposed to have known about before. Camie shrugged, bored with the topic.
It was one night a few weeks later that she went out to the Lars homestead. She left her mother’s speeder on the perimeter, crossing to drop down into the garage area. She was unsurprised to find Luke there, bent over something on the bench by the faint light of a glowpanel. She’d made no noise, but he looked up, saw her on the other side of his family’s battered speeder, and blinked. “Camie.”
“Hey, Wormie.” She flicked him a glance, then walked around the speeder, casting her eye over the inner workings. “Problem with the fuelling system?”
“Sand in it,” he said. “My uncle makes me clean it.”
“You don’t seem to mind.”
He shrugged. “Nothing better to do.”
“How’s that T-16 of yours?” Camie crossed to the workbench, looking down at the filter he had taken apart and was in the process of cleaning.
“Okay,” Luke said. “I still think I can get her to go faster.”
“Fixer was pretty annoyed you beat him on the sandsurfers.”
“I know.” Luke grinned.
Camie smiled. She stared across the room, into the shadows of the work area. Old equipment made strange shapes in the gloom.
“Are you okay?”
Camie blinked and crossed her arms, looking back at Luke. “Fine.”
“How’s your mom?”
Camie’s lips rippled. “Not great,” she admitted, making her voice casual, as though she didn’t care. “She had a fight with my stepfather before. Now she’s drunk.”
“Oh.”
“Don’t you hate this place sometimes?”
“All the time.” Luke spun the filter he held between his fingers. “That’s why I’m going to get out of here.”
Camie snorted. “You’ve been saying that since we were ten.”
“So?”
“You’re still here.”
Luke scowled. “Next year,” he said. “I’ll be the right age for the wide intake at the academy, and Uncle Owen promised he’ll get some help so that I can go.”
“Sure he will.”
Luke frowned. “Just because you’re happy to give up everything and be stuck here - ”
Camie pushed away from the bench. “It’s not about giving up, it’s about facing reality. You’re never going to leave this place, Luke. None of us will.”
“Biggs did.”
“Biggs is rich,” Camie reminded him.
“So did Tank.”
“Tank’s parents are offworlders, and he was sponsored by his grandparents in the Core.”
Luke’s face settled into a stubborn frown. He swung back around to the bench, away from her. “I’m going to get out of here. You’ll see.”
“Keep dreaming, Wormie.” Camie leaned on his shoulder. He shrugged her off, and she laughed lightly, propping a foot on his stool so that she could push herself up to sit on the bench. She swung her feet, watching him as he picked up his brush and resumed his cleaning of the filter. His scowl didn’t shift.
“At least your aunt and uncle never fight,” Camie offered.
“Yeah, but they never let me do what I want to. I wouldn’t be able to just take off with the speeder at night. It’s bad enough trying to get a few hours to myself during the day.”
Camie thought that it wouldn’t be so terrible to have someone sober enough to actually care what she did at night. She kicked her heels with a thunk against the side of the bench. “So,” she said. “Do you still make stuff up about your dad?”
“What? I never made stuff up!”
Camie snorted. “All that about him being the best navigator in the galaxy and fighting off a fleet of space pirates on his own? And rediscovering hyperspace routes into the Unknown Regions? Which was why he had to leave you here? And then he was tragically lost, and couldn’t return to save you from your life of boredom…”
“All right.” He reddened slightly. “I didn’t think you remembered that stuff.”
“I thought it was dramatic and exciting.” Camie lifted an eyebrow. “Of course, you don’t know any more about him than I do about my father, do you?”
Luke glanced aside and didn’t reply.
Camie said, “He was a navigator on a spice freighter, but you don’t know who he really was. For all you know he might not even be dead.”
“What do you mean?”
Camie shrugged. “Maybe that’s a story your aunt and uncle told you so it didn’t hurt as much that he’d abandoned you. Ever considered that?”
He stared at her. His eyes were very blue in the flickering light, almost pretty though a bit girl-like, reminding Camie of the edges of the sky against the searing sand. She saw that he hadn’t ever considered that, and suddenly felt like she’d kicked a bantha cub. Maybe it was true, maybe it wasn’t, but for all his immaturity, Luke’s daydreams somehow protected him from the weight that dragged the rest of them down. That world in his head was more real to him than the sand and heat and boredom of reality. It wasn’t fair for her to take it away from him, and it didn’t seem so funny now to see the doubt in his eyes.
“Sometimes I wish my father was dead,” she said, looking away. “Pretty strange thing to wish for someone you’ve never even met. But I think he could have stuck around. Maybe he had his reasons for going, though. Considering some what some spacers are like, maybe it’s a kindness he did me by not being in my life.”
“Maybe he got lost charting routes to the Unknown Regions,” Luke offered after a long moment, the edge of a smile on his lips.
Camie smiled back. “Maybe,” she said.
“At least you have your mom around,” Luke said after a few moments.
“Yeah,” Camie said reluctantly. “I suppose.” She looked at Luke, who wasn’t looking at her. “What happened to your mom?”
He shrugged, a slight motion. “She’s dead, I guess.”
“Do you know who she was?”
“Nope.” He shifted on the stool, then tapped the filter lightly on the table surface. “That’s done, I think.” He stood.
“Don’t you wonder?” Camie pushed off the bench, following him over to the speeder.
“What’s the point?”
“What’s the point, ever? That doesn’t stop you dreaming about your dad and the academy and using your binocs to try and see into orbit. How come it’s different with your mom?”
He turned around suddenly, and was face to face with her. “Because it is,” he said.
“Okay,” Camie said.
Luke looked at her a moment, then rubbed his face, and the awkward boy was back again. He turned around and bent over the speeder.
“You know,” Camie said, standing to the side so that she could see what he was doing, “I think what you do is more important than where you’re from, anyway.”
“I hope so,” Luke said. “I’d hate for people to know me just as a kid from Tatooine once I get to the academy. I think once they see me fly they’ll know I’m more than that.” He flicked a glance up at her.
Camie smiled. “I know you’re more than that.”
He reddened slightly, but seemed pleased.
Smile widening, Camie walked back over to the bench, propping herself up to sit on it. She swung her legs. Luke darted another glance at her, then concentrated on his filter. Once he’d re-situated it, he crossed back to the bench, leaning beside her almost gingerly.
Camie watched his face. “What about me?” she said, softly.
He looked at her. “You’re more than just a girl from Anchorhead,” he said. It was a combination of shyness and cockiness, blurted in his usual way, without style.
Camie smiled, and tilted her head slightly. Luke hesitated, then leaned in a little way.
There was a scuff from outside the inner door, the sound of boots on the sandy floor. Luke’s uncle appeared in the doorway. “Luke, how’s that-” He saw them, stopped, and stared, his mouth half-open.
Luke straightened quickly, turning his body away from Camie. “Uncle Owen,” he said. “Camie’s - she was just passing.”
It wasn’t the best excuse, considering the Lars farm was so far out she’d have had to have been on her way to the Wastes to be dropping in. Luke’s uncle still looked stunned, though. Camie dropped lightly off the bench. Luke coughed like he had sand in his throat.
“Well,” Luke’s uncle said. “Well. How’s the work on the speeder going?”
“Nearly done,” Luke said. “I just have to fit the last filter back in.”
“Oh,” his uncle said. “Fine. Good lad.”
Luke nodded. His uncle flicked his gaze between Luke and Camie, said, “You, ah, are you - hm.” He frowned and scratched his chin, shook his head slightly, and said, “Well, don’t be up late,” to Luke.
“I know,” Luke said.
“Hm,” his uncle said, hesitated, then nodded to Camie. He turned and left.
Camie waited until the sound of his footsteps had receded, then laughed. Luke turned, a rueful expression on his face. “I can see a lecture coming,” he said.
“Lucky you.”
He met her eyes, easily at first, but his smile seemed to fade. There was something in his gaze that was unsettling - too much hope, perhaps, or a question. “I have to go,” she said. Without waiting for him to respond, she turned and headed for the exit that would take her out into the night and to her waiting speeder. “See you later.”
“Wait - uh…” Behind her, Luke stumbled a little, verbally. “The Sand People, is it safe?”
“I’m going back into Anchorhead, not into the Wastes,” Camie said scornfully.
“Right,” Luke said. “Um. Bye, then.”
Camie waved a hand and slipped out of the work area into the cooler air.
----
Camie spent much of her time working in her stepfather’s store in Anchorhead. It was mind-numbingly dull, but her stepfather didn’t care what she did so long as she balanced her till at the end of the day. Sometimes he’d go out and she’d call Fixer around, dragging him into the cooler storerooms out the back. It broke up the monotony a little.
It was late in the harvest season when the buzzer chimed, signalling the opening of the creaky automatic door. She glanced up from where she was sprawled in a cool spot behind the counter. “Luke,” she said in surprise.
He gave her a half-hearted smile and crossed to the counter, pulling a strip of flimsi out of the bag slung over his shoulder. “Monthly account for water,” he said as he slipped it across. “The comm unit’s down at home - I’m waiting on a part to fix it.”
Camie glanced down at the sheet, written in his aunt’s tidy hand and marked with the Lars notation. “Uh huh,” she said, marking the corner and jamming it into the tally machine to be registered. “Where’ve you been? Haven’t seen you around much.”
He shrugged. “Harvest’s been busy. Uncle Owen needs me on the farm.”
“Bet he’s not letting you out much.”
“Yeah.”
The tally machine beeped and spat out an acknowledgement chit. Camie gave it to Luke, and he tucked it into his bag. “Are you going back to the farm now?” she asked.
“Not straight away. I’ve got to pick up a couple of things from the market for Aunt Beru.”
“I’ll come,” Camie said. She ducked out from behind the counter, calling over her shoulder to her stepfather that she was heading out for a while.
The light was blinding outside. It was mid-afternoon, both suns now past midway point in the sky, the heat from the noon burn just beginning to lessen. Camie and Luke kept to the edges of the wide street as they made their way toward the market stretch, though the sparse shade offered little relief from the heat.
Luke, Camie thought, had gotten a bit leaner in the last few months, though he wasn’t any taller. The exposed parts of his skin - the back of his hands, the side of his neck - were dark from working out in the sun. His hair was longer than last time she’d seen him, and was even more untidy. He still barely looked as though he had to shave, unlike Fixer who had perpetual stubble on his jaw.
“So,” Luke said, after they’d walked for a bit in silence. “I’m curious. Have you been making fun of me?”
“No,” Camie said, startled. “What?”
He set his jaw, looking ahead, red creeping up his neck. “That… thing.”
“What thing?”
“You know.” The look he gave her was caught up in all kinds of things, angry and embarrassed and hurt and wary. “Do you think I’m funny? Laugh at Wormie, just because I-”
“You what?”
“I like you. You know I like you.” He closed his mouth and looked away.
“I wouldn’t do that,” Camie said.
He snorted. “You would so. Remember when I told you that thing about the colours? And you told all the others?”
“I didn’t know you’d get so upset!” Camie said, angry. “Besides, it was funny. You make up crazy things sometimes. I didn’t think you were serious. I mean - dreaming that the whole world is red? No one has dreams like that, it’s stupid. And you said you can feel things in your head before they happen and that they feel like blue and green-”
“Yeah, okay,” Luke said, looking annoyed. “Even if it sounded stupid, you shouldn’t have told anyone. You knew they’d make fun of me. And it was personal.”
“I said I was sorry.”
“You didn’t mean it properly.” He glanced at her. “You still don’t.” Waving off her objection, he said, “Just forget it.” He nodded to a man standing in the shade as they passed into the main market area. “Hi, Ben.”
“Hello, Luke,” said Ben Kenobi. “Young Camie.” He nodded politely to them both. Camie narrowed her eyes and shuffled a step closer to Luke, who gave her a funny look.
“Come in to trade?” he said to Kenobi.
“Something like that,” the old man said. His robes were strange looking, and covered in dust. He looked like he’d made them himself then rolled in dirt for good measure.
Camie tugged Luke’s arm. He said, “Well, see you around,” to Kenobi, and let her pull him on.
“What?” he said to her when they were a few steps away.
She shivered and said, “He gives me the creeps.”
“Ben?” Luke looked back over his shoulder. “Old Ben? He’s harmless.”
“He’s crazy,” Camie said. “Some kind of weird religious hermit, you know. No one knows what he does out there. I’ve heard rumours that he goes out at night looking for people who have gotten lost in the desert-”
“That’s stupid,” Luke said, loudly and crossly.
“No, listen,” Camie said, annoyed herself, because she hadn’t finished her story. “That hut he lives in is supposed to be haunted. My stepdad’s friend even heard him talking to no one once, here in town, having a whole conversation. He said normally he’d laugh, but it made his hair stand on end, because he could feel something-”
“The effects of too much ale, probably.”
Camie glanced over her shoulder. “He’s watching us,” she said.
Luke looked back. “So? He’s harmless. He used to come around the farm sometimes to trade, when I was younger. And he saved me and Windy once. People just like to say he’s crazy because he does what they’re afraid to - live out there in the Wastes, all alone.”
“Maybe you should be his apprentice hermit, if you like the idea that much.” Camie dropped his arm as they stopped at a spices stall.
“Are you kidding? Being stuck where I am now is bad enough.” Luke pointed out some containers, which the stallholder, Kett Teriso’s aunt, wrapped. They bartered, Luke handed over his trade chit, and he and Camie crossed to the next stall.
“So has your uncle agreed to let you go to the academy this season?” Camie asked.
“No,” Luke said sullenly. He screwed up his nose at the wares on display and headed off toward a different stall. Camie lingered, running her eyes over the beaded necklaces. There was a pretty one with carved blue beads that she liked, but it was too expensive. She thought about pointing it out to Luke, but she doubted he could afford it either. She wasn’t even sure that the Larses paid him real wages.
With a sigh, she followed Luke, who didn’t appear to have noticed he’d left her behind. When she caught up, he was arguing with the textiles stallholder - old Tell’s wife, wasn’t she? - over the value of the brush-weaves he held. They eventually settled. Camie poked through the finer fabrics while he repeated the process with seedlings at the next stall.
Camie waited until they had walked back to his speeder, Luke distracted with his purchases, repeating them under his breath as he tried to work out if he’d remembered everything. “You still think you’re going to get to the academy?” she said casually.
Luke piled the purchases on the passenger seat. “Of course I am. Next season.”
Camie sighed. “See you later, Wormie.”
The wind whipped sand around her legs as she walked away, her skirt fluttering in the hot breeze, hair tendrilling around her face. She was quite pleased in the moment, and imagined Luke looking after her in confusion and longing. She didn’t look back, in case he wasn’t watching her at all.
----
She was sitting on Fixer’s lap when she next saw Luke. It was afternoon, almost night, and they were all at the station. The harvest season was nearing an end, days getting even hotter. Luke looked dusty when he came in, trailing behind Windy looking disgruntled.
“Hey, Wormie!” Fixer hailed him. “Pull up a seat! We’re celebrating.”
“What is there to celebrate?”
“Me’n Camie are gonna get married.”
She watched Luke from the edge of her eye. He crinkled his nose, lips twisting a little. “Aren’t you kind of young?” he said to her directly.
Camie narrowed her eyes. It wasn’t quite what she’d thought she might get in terms of reaction.
“Hey!” Fixer’s arm tightened around her. “She’s going to manage this place with me. We’ve got big plans. It’ll be great.” He pulled her in for a kiss. He tasted like ale.
“Congratulations,” Luke said, and turned and said something to Windy about taking T-16s out because the womp rats were getting bad again.
He went outside after a while. Camie waited, and when Fixer was in the middle of a long story about racing swoops in Mos Espa, she slipped out as well.
“Hey,” she called softly. He’d dropped down the metre or so to the ground, and was standing with his back to the building. He turned, and she sat on the edge of the rounded platform, clambering down to his level. He grabbed her hand to help her down, sand gritting between their fingers as they touched. He dropped her hand as soon as she reached the bottom. She was caught by how odd a gesture it was, and wondered if his uncle assisted his aunt like that.
“What do you want?” he said without enthusiasm.
“What are you doing?” She looked around at the empty landscape.
“Thought I’d watch the stars come out.”
She rolled her eyes. “Oh, Luke. Really?”
He gave her a look, one that wasn’t exactly friendly.
“Are you angry at me?” she asked playfully.
“No.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Why would you do that?” He looked at her, perplexed. “Do you want that? This?”
“Want what?”
He seemed to be searching for words, at last stabbing a hand towards the station, looming over them. “That thing, and Fixer - you’re giving up the rest of your life.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Yes, you are. It’s stupid.”
“Don’t call me stupid!” She glared at him. “You don’t know anything. What did you think I’d do, get married to you? Slave away on some stupid moisture farm for the rest of my life? Fixer’s manager of this place, and he’ll own it someday. He’s worth something. He’s got a future. A plan.”
Luke looked surprised, then indignant. “I’m not going to be a moisture farmer. I’m getting off this place, you know that. I’m going to get into the academy.”
“Oh, please.” Camie rolled her eyes, and was annoyed, because she knew he couldn’t see the effect in the dark. “You’ve been saying that since you were ten years old. You’re not there, are you?”
“I will be. Once my uncle-”
“No!” She thrust her hand at him, fingers brushing his worn tunic. He stepped back. “You won’t, Luke. Listen for once! You think you’re better than all of us, with your dreams and your plans, like we’re meant for this and you’re not. Let me tell you - it’s not that, at all. The difference is that you haven’t grown up enough to realise that this is what your life is. You’re never going to get off this world.”
“I am.”
She shook her head. “You won’t. You’re not good enough or smart enough. You don’t have money or connections. You’re just like the rest of us. Stuck here.”
“You’re the one who doesn’t know anything, Camie. I’m not going to be stuck here.”
“Yes, you are.”
“No, I’m not!” He looked away. “You might choose that, but I don’t.”
“Choose that?” She wheeled away, turning on her heel, presenting him with her profile, lifting her hands to her hair as she laughed sharply. It felt strange in her chest, a little rough, like sand accidentally swallowed. “I’m not going to waste my life dreaming, Luke. I’m going to make the best of what I have. And it’s going to be great.”
“Yeah,” Luke said. “I’m sure it will.”
He didn’t put scorn into his voice, which stung infinitely more, because she suspected on some level he was trying to be kind. She swung on him, eyes narrowed. “I’m going to have more than you ever will,” she said. “I won’t be some dirt-poor moisture farmer’s wife, patching my patches until there’s nothing original left, working and working and never complaining until the day I die a withered old husk. Not me.”
He looked at her. The light barely reached him, illuminating only his chin and a faint glint in the region of his eyes. She felt even angrier, unable to judge whether her thrusts were landing or sliding away. Fury skittered under her fingers, swirling a crescendo. “You just don’t see it,” she said savagely. “You’re eighteen. You said you’d be gone two years ago. You’re going to be forty, and you’ll still be here, penniless, with nothing, a moisture farmer like your uncle. All you’ll have is that - whatever it is. Pride or something, that makes you think you’re better than all this. And it’ll turn to bitterness in the end, because you never made it.”
Wind blew in the silence that fell. Her mouth felt odd, hollow with an edge of Fixer’s stale taste and the hard tang of the air.
Luke finally moved, a step back, another. “You’re wrong,” he said, quite calmly. “I’m going to leave this place. You’ll see. I’ll never come back.” He turned and walked away.
“You’re wrong,” Camie called. “You’ll rot here. Wormie you are, Luke. You’ll worm down in the sand and it’ll kill you!”
He didn’t come back. He didn’t respond at all. Camie sat in the dirt after he vanished. Her hands were shaking, so she hugged her knees.
When she looked up, there were a few stars in the sky, tiny sparkling pinpricks.
Camie watched them waver, blinked and blinked again. She laughed, once, then pressed her face knees and rocked.
----
She and Fixer had agreed from the start to wait a few years before getting married, so that there would be time to save money. Fixer’s mom didn’t have anything to contribute, and Camie’s stepfather could only afford a little. The wedding would have to be simple, but Camie was determined that it would be something that Anchorhead would remember.
Fixer said he’d get all the money they needed through some project he was working on down in the distribution chambers of the station, but when Camie had snuck down there, all she found was a hunk of spare parts and what looked like some kind of modified swoop. She had no idea how he thought he could make money off that thing.
She saw Luke a few times, at the Station or at Beggar’s Canyon. Without Biggs, there wasn’t much competition in the T-16 races. Fixer was a good mechanic - best this side of Mos Eisley, Camie felt - but he wasn’t in Luke and Biggs’ league when it came to racing. He could beat Deak and Windy, but Luke always won, even when it was clear he was barely trying.
Luke came bursting into the station one day in middle of the off-harvest season, blurting about battles and rebellions. He dragged them out into the blinding heat to stare up at two specks in orbit, and seemed crushed when nothing happened - just as he did every other time he imagined space battles over Tatooine. They trailed back into the relative cool of the station, leaving Luke squinting up through his macrobinoculars.
“Dumb kid,” Fixer grumbled.
“Now I’ve seen real space battles,” Biggs, back from the Academy before his first assignment, tugged at his tunic. It was nothing like what he used to wear. “If you ask me, Luke just saw flashes off the hulls of those ships. The suns, probably.”
“Wormie’s always seeing things,” Deak said. Windy laughed.
Camie laughed herself and glanced back as Luke lowered the binocs, features set in disappointment. He threw a glance towards the station reproachfully, and tugged at the brim of the floppy old hat he always wore before turning and trudging away.
Luke was always put out when no one believed his stories. He’d be back.
Over a week later, the wreckage of the Lars farm was discovered. There were two bodies, not three. At first, it was thought to have been a Tusken raid, though it was unheard of for them to attack a settlement. The Imperial garrison did nothing, and a handful of people from Anchorhead went out to bury the bodies.
Camie went with them, watching with her arms tightly crossed as Fixer and Deak and old Tell and big, broad-nosed Rendu carefully pulled the bodies clear of the sand which had begun to bury them already. The whole farm was ruined, the buildings blackened and destroyed with the fire and the smoke. Something in the underground garage had exploded.
This was not the work of Tuskens.
Then someone said that they’d seen Luke five days ago, in the company of that old lunatic Kenobi. Heading for Mos Eisley with two valuable droids.
The muttering started. Hadn’t that boy always been strange? Hadn’t he wanted to leave? Everyone knew Owen Lars despaired of him, and refused to allow him offworld. Maybe there’d been an argument. Maybe it was in cold blood.
Camie was furious. She rounded on anyone she heard spreading the rumour, and demanded whether they knew Luke Skywalker. Yes? No? Only a moron would think that he could murder anyone. Especially his aunt and uncle. Yes, she meant that as an insult. Chuba schutta wata to you too, wermo.
A few weeks later word began to trickle in via Mos Eisley about the Rebellion blowing up a new battle station built by the Empire. People gathered in small groups in the alleys, breaking up whenever patrolling stormtroopers came into view.
“I think it was Luke,” Camie said to Fixer, kicking her heels as she watched him working on the old swoop in the station underbasement.
“I dunno,” he said doubtfully, tightening something. He groped around behind him. “Deak said the spacer he was talking to in Mos Eisley said the guy’s name was Starkiller or something.”
Camie leaned and picked up the hydrospanner on Fixer’s left, placing it in his hand. He gave her a smile, and kept working. “It kind of sounds similar,” she said. “And they said he was from the Outer Rim and had just arrived with the Rebellion. Old Teska Tell said she heard he’d never flown an X-wing before.”
“She also said she heard his father was a Jedi, remember?” Fixer put the ’spanner in his mouth and picked up the wrangler, spinning it absently in his hand as he eyed at the parts.
“Well…” Camie shrugged. “No one really knows anything about Luke’s father.”
Fixer gave her an incredulous look, taking the hydrospanner out of his mouth. “Little Wormie? The son of a Jedi?”
“Remember how fast he used to take those turns through Beggar’s Canyon?”
Fixer’s face darkened - probably with the memory of losing to Luke. “Yeah.”
Camie shrugged again. “Or maybe his father wasn’t a Jedi and Luke’s just gotten it into his head for some reason. That wouldn’t surprise me either.”
Fixer grunted. He kept working on the swoop, but Camie could see something was distracting him. Usually his concentration was intensely focused when he was working: there was a certain look he got in his eyes, as something in his head shifted to repulsors and gears and how it all fitted together. She was the only person, he said, who didn’t put him off when he was working. Everyone else, he ordered out.
After a while, he stopped what he was doing, and gave her a troubled look. “Camie,” he said, “you know Luke might not be alive, right?”
She tossed her hair. “Of course he is.”
“Chances are it was the Imperials that burned the Lars homestead,” he said. “Remember all that activity a few weeks ago? There were stormies everywhere.”
She’d figured the same, but was surprised he’d noticed. Fixer noticed more than he let on, she had realised lately. “So?”
“So we don’t know for sure that those two bodies we found were Beru and Owen. It could have been Luke and Beru, and the stormies might have dragged Owen off for questioning. Or that might have happened to Luke.”
Camie shook her head. “No. Someone saw him with old Ben Kenobi. He got away. He did what he said he would.”
Fixer rubbed his forehead, smearing oil there. “Okay,” he said. “I hope so. I mean… we were hard on him sometimes. But he was all right.”
Camie brushed sand from her skirt, and lifted her chin. “Yeah,” she said. “He was okay.”
Her mother got sick that harvest, and died a month before the new year. Camie stood by her stepfather as they lowered her mother’s body into the sand. Fixer stood on her other side, as he’d stayed with her every day while her mother was sick and dying. He didn’t speak, but his hand was there to hold hers as the sand settled. He helped her get her stepfather home and he sat with her that night on the back step of her stepfather’s house, home to the three of them since she’d been small, as the tears - clumsy, heaving tears that were undramatic except in the way they threatened to rip her apart - finally came.
They were married a few months later. His swoop turned out to be an old podracer, which he sold somewhere in Mos Espa for a price sufficient to pay for their wedding and have credits left over. Her wedding skirt was made in Mos Eisley, traditional blue, with Fixer wearing a pale sash and fidgeting, his palm sweaty as he took her hand. His grip was firm, as if he was afraid she’d vanish if he let go. If his eyes were a little watery as he said his vows, she didn’t mention it, and neither did he.
Most of Anchorhead turned out for the wedding, and it was the biggest event of the season. Camie showed off her skirt to full advantage, smiled and gleamed and held Fixer’s hand throughout. When he kissed her, the sky flashed blindingly in her eyes, bright and bleak and true, and Camie’s eyes watered. Her stepfather hugged her, and then a coverter blew its fuse in the station, and she went with Fixer to repair it.
In the ensuing months, an alien by the name of Throgg took over the Lars moisture farm - the property had been settled on him via what general authority held to be genuine deeds, so it seemed increasingly likely that Luke was alive somewhere. Huff Darklighter was none too pleased, but was diverted by the news of Biggs’s death. He took it hard, but made sure it was widely known that Biggs had died a hero in the battle where the Death Star, the Empire’s newest weapon, was destroyed. The local Moff being in his pocket meant that Huff had little to fear in the way of repercussions.
An Imperial officer appeared at the end of harvest, asking questions about local boys who had left in the last year. When little information was forthcoming, he began to remark on the number of Rebels coming from the region, on insurrectionist breeding grounds and on consequences. Before he left, he had Luke’s name.
Camie had been married a year and was pregnant when she heard that Luke was on the planet - or had been. Jabba’s palace was in ruins before the story came together, how someone had seen him in Mos Eisley and Rendu had noticed a change in Jawa movements out on the Wastes and Jora had seen a landspeeder heading towards the hut that once belonged to Kenobi.
By that time stories about Luke Skywalker, hero of the Rebels, were beginning to trickle through from the spaceport in Mos Eisley. There were wild tales about him being a Jedi, and leading Rebel fleets in battle. Camie thought most of it a load of spaceshim, given how many times it had to have been repeated before it reached Anchorhead. But still.
The destruction of Jabba’s Palace and the mystery surrounding the event heightened Luke’s celebrity. Camie began to suspect that half of Anchorhead had forgotten that they’d actually known Luke, once. Maybe that short, impractical boy they’d watched grow up was all too easily swallowed by the image of a hero who waved a glowing sword and destroyed battle stations and came back in disguise with a beautiful woman and a dashing man and a Wookiee and two droids to bring down Jabba and his corrupt empire.
Camie found herself remembering that boy, though. In her memory he was self-absorbed and immature and petulant and still generous, open in his emotions in a way that reached out and didn’t care how many times it was hurt or knocked down. She wondered why he’d never come to see all of them after his aunt and uncle died, never said goodbye. Never visited on his return to say he was alive, to see what they were doing. Then she realised he probably thought, back then and now, that he had nothing here. Because he’d always been looking for a way in, but never found it. They’d never given it to him, because he’d never wanted anything they did.
Her pregnancy was a difficult one, complicated by one of the hottest seasons in years. Fixer stomped around and swore at people and the power converters ran down because they weren’t being maintained. The women who’d been her mother’s friends pressed cool fingers to her pulse and pinched her skin and argued over her colour, and Fixer took a speeder to Mos Eisley and got a medic, who took one look and insisted she give birth in the med centre in Mos Eisley. They travelled back in Fixer’s speeder, and Fixer hovered as she slept until she got sick of it and ordered him to find her some decent clothes other than those she’d come in.
The birth was long. Most of it was a haze, later, but she remembered Fixer stroking her hair and whispered for her to hold on in a voice she hardly recognised as his, and she remembered the cries of her son when she finally held him.
In the confusion of the birth and the return to Anchorhead a few weeks later, they almost lost the news of upheaval that was gradually trickling through from the rest of the galaxy. Teskar Tell said she’d heard the Rebels had built their own Death Star and used it on the Empire, while Windy said he’d heard that the Empire were the ones with the Death Star, built to use against the Rebels, but that it had blown up and taken out the Imperial fleet. Then someone said Darth Vader and the Emperor were dead, and someone else heard it independently, and Ty Blackhill who worked out on one of the Darklighter homesteads said that the HoloNet had been reporting the Emperor and Vader were dead before it was shut down.
Fixer came in one night, late back from a repair to the backup units east of Anchorhead. “They’re rioting in Mos Espa,” he said to her. “People started celebrating and the stormtroopers moved in.” He pulled off his boots and looked at her. “I heard someone say that it was Luke who killed them. Vader and the Emperor, I mean.”
“I heard that too,” Camie said. She was standing near the open door, watching the darkness outside. The baby was asleep. They’d name him Laze, the name Fixer had inherited from his own father, who’d died when he was a boy. His naming day wouldn’t come until he was six months old, but Camie hadn’t ever cared much for ceremony.
“You think it’s true?”
Camie shrugged. “Them that support the Empire are remembering how he used to hunt womp rats and drive his speeder too fast as they whisper about the Lars deaths. The rest talk about him like he was some kind of undiscovered wonder in our midst. I heard old Tell talking about how she sold him weaves.”
“So?”
“So none of it’s really true.” She rubbed her eyes and left her hand there, fingers pressed to her temples. “Not that it seems to matter.”
“Are you all right?”
She sighed. “I’m tired.” She let her hand fall. “He just never seemed like a killer to me.”
“He’s a Rebel,” Fixer said. “They do that. And they say he’s a Jedi, now, too. Besides, the Emperor and Vader are - you know.”
“I guess he got the life he wanted,” Camie said, looking out at the stars gleaming in the black of the sky. “I wonder if he’s happy with it.”
Fixer’s chair creaked as he got up, the clasps on his belt clinking as he walked over. He touched her hesitantly, his hands on her shoulders, stroking. He angled himself so that he could see her face, looked at her for a moment, and then said, “Are you?”
She could hear the worry in his voice, though he was doing his best not to let it through. The rough skin of his fingers caught at the fabric of her nightgown.
The stars twinkled down at the sand, pretty, cold, and so far away. Camie smiled to herself; not reflective or joyful, exactly, but neither bitter. She said, “Probably.”
Fixer’s breath teased the hair by her ear, a sigh given as thoughtlessly as the wind that teased the sand to life in the drifting piles below.
In the warm, safe darkness of the house, Laze woke and began to cry. Fixer stretched, belt clanking, boots creaking. “I’ll get him.”
He went. Laze quieted. Camie was left on her own with the stars, in the dark.
She shook her head - maybe at Luke, wherever he was, or maybe at the stupid girl and the idiot boy who had argued down in the night shadows of the building a handful of years ago - and, with a last look upwards, she went inside.
--end--
Characters: Luke, Camie, other Tatooine inhabitants, Obi-Wan cameo
Setting: Two years pre-ANH through to the end of ROTJ
Word Count: ~8,000
Summary: Life's hard on Tatooine, and not everyone makes it out.
A/N: I've always felt poor Camie gets rather an unfair run as The Only Girl On Tatooine (TM). This is my attempt to explore her character a little more fully. It's not Luke/Camie as such, despite appearances (in case anyone is particularly worried).
X-posted to TFN and probably FFN eventually.
In the off-harvest season, Anchorhead’s afternoons stretched for an age, hot and bright and featureless. Dusk hung suspended as one sun, then the other, was pulled by increments down toward the horizon.
The uneven screech of Fixer’s oft-repaired door was piercing in the still air. The door seized, and Camie cursed. Fixer and Deak laughed, back inside the station, so she swore at them too, and gave up her attempt to meaningful slam the door, kicking it instead and striding out to the edge of the station’s raised slab. Hidden from other eyes, she allowed herself to sit clumsily, legs hooked over the platform edge, hands pressed to her eyes to contain her spinning head. The stone warmed the back of her legs through the fabric of her skirt, but she was protected from the still-punishing heat of the late-afternoon suns by the station’s long shadow.
The dry air prickled her skin after the coolness of the interior and brought water to her eyes. She wiped it away with the heel of her hand, breathing in the flat taste of the heat. She touched her hair, absently but methodically twisted a strand between her fingers, tucking it so that it appeared casually disarrayed.
The door squeaked, and she started, lowering her hand, tucking her legs under her. Footsteps scuffed to her left. A voice said, hesitant, “Camie?”
Her pose loosened and she twisted around, glaring sideways and up over her shoulder. “What do you want, Wormie?”
“Um,” he said. “Just seeing if you’re okay.”
“Go away.” She leaned her chin on her fist and scowled at the dirt.
He didn’t, instead moving closer and hesitating within arm span of her, then sitting a little further along. She didn’t say anything. The wind blew, strong and hot, and they both turned away.
Camie flicked grains of sand from her brown skirt. Luke said, “I don’t get it.”
“What?” she said, full of scorn.
He blushed red, but surged on. “Why do you put up with him?”
Camie gave her skirt a final brush with more force than necessary, glaring at the edge of the shadow. “I said go away.”
“It’s not my fault Fixer’s a jerk.”
“As if you know anything!” Camie said. Her voice sounded sharper than she thought. Luke eyed her, and she looked at nothing.
“He’s just a bully,” Luke muttered, under his breath.
“I don’t see you standing up to him when he makes fun of you,” Camie pointed out.
Luke flushed again, barely visible in the spreading gloom. “I do so.”
“You try to. You say the first thing that comes in your head and sound like a whining baby. ‘Shut up, Fixer,’ ‘Leave me alone, Deak’, ‘That’s not fair, Windy’.” She pitched her voice like his.
“At least I don’t just take it!”
Camie sighed. “They wouldn’t do it if you didn’t always run your mouth off when they tease you.”
He glared at her. “You do it too, half the time. And don’t try to act like you know better. You’re the same age I am.”
“Age isn’t the same as maturity, Wormie. And by the way, Fixer’s klicks ahead of you.” She gave him a pointed smile.
He frowned. She thought he was just brooding like he did, but then he said, “But what’s he got? This stupid station? That he doesn’t even own?”
“He will one day,” Camie said.
“So?”
Camie rolled her eyes. “We can’t all command the Imperial Fleet.”
He glared. “I’m going to have more than a power station, I know that much.”
She was listening for the door behind them, but there was nothing. Fixer’s voice was slurred now, drifting from inside, the laughter uneven. She blinked again. Luke was looking at her, indignant, intent. His hair was unevenly cut, his worn clothes slightly too small for him. “What will you have?” Camie said, but what she thought would come out as sarcasm came out as curiosity, or something else, something like wistfulness.
“I’m going to go to the academy and I’m going to be a pilot. In the Empire.”
Camie laughed and closed her eyes.
There was a whisper, as Luke shifted. “You could too,” he said. “You could be out there somewhere one day. You should be. I know you hate it here.”
“No one likes it here.” Camie said, as deflection, out of shock. She hadn’t ever heard him extend his delusion to anyone other than Biggs. And Biggs was already gone.
He sighed in frustration. He’d moved a little closer, his body warm in the cooling air. “I’m not talking about them. Why do you always do that? Quit faking all the time, Camie.”
“I’m not faking.”
“You do.” He looked annoyed, then seemed to remember to be shy and shuffled around again awkwardly, eyes darting to her hair and past and the other way.
“I’m a woman, Luke. You wouldn’t understand that.” Camie smiled, her eyelids half-lowered. She shifted toward him marginally in experiment, touched his knee.
He looked uncomfortable, almost in pain; embarrassed and intrigued and torn. He shifted from under her touch. “Stop it.”
She laughed, but was intrigued herself. Luke wasn’t really as much of a kid as she thought. She ran an eye over him, and realised that, seeing him every day, she’d missed noticing how the softness in his face had fallen away, how his shoulders had gotten broader. There was some fuzz on his jawline, even. His hands were narrow and roughened with working in the sun, stained with coolant and oil - mostly around the fingers, unlike the oil that covered Fixer’s hands, because Luke and his uncle fixed the intricate workings of the moisture vaporators while Fixer repaired the bunker full of converters that powered Anchorhead.
She listened for the door and heard nothing. Fixer laughed inside.
“What makes you think I would be suited for the galaxy?” she said, voice pitched low.
Luke eyed her, half-hopeful. “Because…” He breathed through his mouth, caught himself, flicked a look up and down and to her face. “Because you’re smart, and you’re pretty. Beautiful,” he amended. “And…”
“Lying,” Camie said.
He did look at her face then, gaze direct to hers. He said, “No.”
Camie smiled to herself, and then felt a moment of confusion. She leaned her toward him. He hesitated and gingerly moved toward her. She pressed her mouth to his.
He tasted like oiled sweetcakes and very cheap ale, his lips chapped, the pressure of his mouth very light on hers. She smelled faint sweat and the Wastes.
After a moment she withdrew. He looked at her like he’d never seen her before. She stood, lifted her chin and stood with her pose just so, and said, “See you later, Wormie.”
Voices trickled out into the night through the partially open door as she walked across the platform. She smiled, fixed her hair carefully, and went out into the falling night.
---
She patched things up with a very hungover Fixer the next day. Sitting on his lap in the coolest part of the station where he’d set up his workdesk, she caught a glimpse of herself in the burnished side of a medium-sized power converter. She brushed her hair back and tilted her head. “Do you think I’m pretty?”
Fixer, leaning back with a cool pack over his eyes, grunted. She elbowed him and he started. “Yeah,” he said. “ ’Course.” He sat up and eased her off his lap. She stood reluctantly. “My head’s killing me,” he complained, leaning back again.
Camie turned and looked at her distorted reflection. She ran her fingers through her hair, sweeping it wide across her shoulders. Her face looked pale, circles under her eyes from lack of sleep. She pinched her cheeks to give them some colour, and breathed out softly.
She saw Luke a couple of times with the others, and though he cast her uncertain looks from under his lashes, he didn’t say anything out of the ordinary to her. He and Windy beat Fixer sandsurfing with repulsors, and Fixer sulked for a week. He told her he suspected Luke had cheated on the course somehow because he’d managed to avoid a difficult dip in the chosen track that he wasn’t supposed to have known about before. Camie shrugged, bored with the topic.
It was one night a few weeks later that she went out to the Lars homestead. She left her mother’s speeder on the perimeter, crossing to drop down into the garage area. She was unsurprised to find Luke there, bent over something on the bench by the faint light of a glowpanel. She’d made no noise, but he looked up, saw her on the other side of his family’s battered speeder, and blinked. “Camie.”
“Hey, Wormie.” She flicked him a glance, then walked around the speeder, casting her eye over the inner workings. “Problem with the fuelling system?”
“Sand in it,” he said. “My uncle makes me clean it.”
“You don’t seem to mind.”
He shrugged. “Nothing better to do.”
“How’s that T-16 of yours?” Camie crossed to the workbench, looking down at the filter he had taken apart and was in the process of cleaning.
“Okay,” Luke said. “I still think I can get her to go faster.”
“Fixer was pretty annoyed you beat him on the sandsurfers.”
“I know.” Luke grinned.
Camie smiled. She stared across the room, into the shadows of the work area. Old equipment made strange shapes in the gloom.
“Are you okay?”
Camie blinked and crossed her arms, looking back at Luke. “Fine.”
“How’s your mom?”
Camie’s lips rippled. “Not great,” she admitted, making her voice casual, as though she didn’t care. “She had a fight with my stepfather before. Now she’s drunk.”
“Oh.”
“Don’t you hate this place sometimes?”
“All the time.” Luke spun the filter he held between his fingers. “That’s why I’m going to get out of here.”
Camie snorted. “You’ve been saying that since we were ten.”
“So?”
“You’re still here.”
Luke scowled. “Next year,” he said. “I’ll be the right age for the wide intake at the academy, and Uncle Owen promised he’ll get some help so that I can go.”
“Sure he will.”
Luke frowned. “Just because you’re happy to give up everything and be stuck here - ”
Camie pushed away from the bench. “It’s not about giving up, it’s about facing reality. You’re never going to leave this place, Luke. None of us will.”
“Biggs did.”
“Biggs is rich,” Camie reminded him.
“So did Tank.”
“Tank’s parents are offworlders, and he was sponsored by his grandparents in the Core.”
Luke’s face settled into a stubborn frown. He swung back around to the bench, away from her. “I’m going to get out of here. You’ll see.”
“Keep dreaming, Wormie.” Camie leaned on his shoulder. He shrugged her off, and she laughed lightly, propping a foot on his stool so that she could push herself up to sit on the bench. She swung her feet, watching him as he picked up his brush and resumed his cleaning of the filter. His scowl didn’t shift.
“At least your aunt and uncle never fight,” Camie offered.
“Yeah, but they never let me do what I want to. I wouldn’t be able to just take off with the speeder at night. It’s bad enough trying to get a few hours to myself during the day.”
Camie thought that it wouldn’t be so terrible to have someone sober enough to actually care what she did at night. She kicked her heels with a thunk against the side of the bench. “So,” she said. “Do you still make stuff up about your dad?”
“What? I never made stuff up!”
Camie snorted. “All that about him being the best navigator in the galaxy and fighting off a fleet of space pirates on his own? And rediscovering hyperspace routes into the Unknown Regions? Which was why he had to leave you here? And then he was tragically lost, and couldn’t return to save you from your life of boredom…”
“All right.” He reddened slightly. “I didn’t think you remembered that stuff.”
“I thought it was dramatic and exciting.” Camie lifted an eyebrow. “Of course, you don’t know any more about him than I do about my father, do you?”
Luke glanced aside and didn’t reply.
Camie said, “He was a navigator on a spice freighter, but you don’t know who he really was. For all you know he might not even be dead.”
“What do you mean?”
Camie shrugged. “Maybe that’s a story your aunt and uncle told you so it didn’t hurt as much that he’d abandoned you. Ever considered that?”
He stared at her. His eyes were very blue in the flickering light, almost pretty though a bit girl-like, reminding Camie of the edges of the sky against the searing sand. She saw that he hadn’t ever considered that, and suddenly felt like she’d kicked a bantha cub. Maybe it was true, maybe it wasn’t, but for all his immaturity, Luke’s daydreams somehow protected him from the weight that dragged the rest of them down. That world in his head was more real to him than the sand and heat and boredom of reality. It wasn’t fair for her to take it away from him, and it didn’t seem so funny now to see the doubt in his eyes.
“Sometimes I wish my father was dead,” she said, looking away. “Pretty strange thing to wish for someone you’ve never even met. But I think he could have stuck around. Maybe he had his reasons for going, though. Considering some what some spacers are like, maybe it’s a kindness he did me by not being in my life.”
“Maybe he got lost charting routes to the Unknown Regions,” Luke offered after a long moment, the edge of a smile on his lips.
Camie smiled back. “Maybe,” she said.
“At least you have your mom around,” Luke said after a few moments.
“Yeah,” Camie said reluctantly. “I suppose.” She looked at Luke, who wasn’t looking at her. “What happened to your mom?”
He shrugged, a slight motion. “She’s dead, I guess.”
“Do you know who she was?”
“Nope.” He shifted on the stool, then tapped the filter lightly on the table surface. “That’s done, I think.” He stood.
“Don’t you wonder?” Camie pushed off the bench, following him over to the speeder.
“What’s the point?”
“What’s the point, ever? That doesn’t stop you dreaming about your dad and the academy and using your binocs to try and see into orbit. How come it’s different with your mom?”
He turned around suddenly, and was face to face with her. “Because it is,” he said.
“Okay,” Camie said.
Luke looked at her a moment, then rubbed his face, and the awkward boy was back again. He turned around and bent over the speeder.
“You know,” Camie said, standing to the side so that she could see what he was doing, “I think what you do is more important than where you’re from, anyway.”
“I hope so,” Luke said. “I’d hate for people to know me just as a kid from Tatooine once I get to the academy. I think once they see me fly they’ll know I’m more than that.” He flicked a glance up at her.
Camie smiled. “I know you’re more than that.”
He reddened slightly, but seemed pleased.
Smile widening, Camie walked back over to the bench, propping herself up to sit on it. She swung her legs. Luke darted another glance at her, then concentrated on his filter. Once he’d re-situated it, he crossed back to the bench, leaning beside her almost gingerly.
Camie watched his face. “What about me?” she said, softly.
He looked at her. “You’re more than just a girl from Anchorhead,” he said. It was a combination of shyness and cockiness, blurted in his usual way, without style.
Camie smiled, and tilted her head slightly. Luke hesitated, then leaned in a little way.
There was a scuff from outside the inner door, the sound of boots on the sandy floor. Luke’s uncle appeared in the doorway. “Luke, how’s that-” He saw them, stopped, and stared, his mouth half-open.
Luke straightened quickly, turning his body away from Camie. “Uncle Owen,” he said. “Camie’s - she was just passing.”
It wasn’t the best excuse, considering the Lars farm was so far out she’d have had to have been on her way to the Wastes to be dropping in. Luke’s uncle still looked stunned, though. Camie dropped lightly off the bench. Luke coughed like he had sand in his throat.
“Well,” Luke’s uncle said. “Well. How’s the work on the speeder going?”
“Nearly done,” Luke said. “I just have to fit the last filter back in.”
“Oh,” his uncle said. “Fine. Good lad.”
Luke nodded. His uncle flicked his gaze between Luke and Camie, said, “You, ah, are you - hm.” He frowned and scratched his chin, shook his head slightly, and said, “Well, don’t be up late,” to Luke.
“I know,” Luke said.
“Hm,” his uncle said, hesitated, then nodded to Camie. He turned and left.
Camie waited until the sound of his footsteps had receded, then laughed. Luke turned, a rueful expression on his face. “I can see a lecture coming,” he said.
“Lucky you.”
He met her eyes, easily at first, but his smile seemed to fade. There was something in his gaze that was unsettling - too much hope, perhaps, or a question. “I have to go,” she said. Without waiting for him to respond, she turned and headed for the exit that would take her out into the night and to her waiting speeder. “See you later.”
“Wait - uh…” Behind her, Luke stumbled a little, verbally. “The Sand People, is it safe?”
“I’m going back into Anchorhead, not into the Wastes,” Camie said scornfully.
“Right,” Luke said. “Um. Bye, then.”
Camie waved a hand and slipped out of the work area into the cooler air.
----
Camie spent much of her time working in her stepfather’s store in Anchorhead. It was mind-numbingly dull, but her stepfather didn’t care what she did so long as she balanced her till at the end of the day. Sometimes he’d go out and she’d call Fixer around, dragging him into the cooler storerooms out the back. It broke up the monotony a little.
It was late in the harvest season when the buzzer chimed, signalling the opening of the creaky automatic door. She glanced up from where she was sprawled in a cool spot behind the counter. “Luke,” she said in surprise.
He gave her a half-hearted smile and crossed to the counter, pulling a strip of flimsi out of the bag slung over his shoulder. “Monthly account for water,” he said as he slipped it across. “The comm unit’s down at home - I’m waiting on a part to fix it.”
Camie glanced down at the sheet, written in his aunt’s tidy hand and marked with the Lars notation. “Uh huh,” she said, marking the corner and jamming it into the tally machine to be registered. “Where’ve you been? Haven’t seen you around much.”
He shrugged. “Harvest’s been busy. Uncle Owen needs me on the farm.”
“Bet he’s not letting you out much.”
“Yeah.”
The tally machine beeped and spat out an acknowledgement chit. Camie gave it to Luke, and he tucked it into his bag. “Are you going back to the farm now?” she asked.
“Not straight away. I’ve got to pick up a couple of things from the market for Aunt Beru.”
“I’ll come,” Camie said. She ducked out from behind the counter, calling over her shoulder to her stepfather that she was heading out for a while.
The light was blinding outside. It was mid-afternoon, both suns now past midway point in the sky, the heat from the noon burn just beginning to lessen. Camie and Luke kept to the edges of the wide street as they made their way toward the market stretch, though the sparse shade offered little relief from the heat.
Luke, Camie thought, had gotten a bit leaner in the last few months, though he wasn’t any taller. The exposed parts of his skin - the back of his hands, the side of his neck - were dark from working out in the sun. His hair was longer than last time she’d seen him, and was even more untidy. He still barely looked as though he had to shave, unlike Fixer who had perpetual stubble on his jaw.
“So,” Luke said, after they’d walked for a bit in silence. “I’m curious. Have you been making fun of me?”
“No,” Camie said, startled. “What?”
He set his jaw, looking ahead, red creeping up his neck. “That… thing.”
“What thing?”
“You know.” The look he gave her was caught up in all kinds of things, angry and embarrassed and hurt and wary. “Do you think I’m funny? Laugh at Wormie, just because I-”
“You what?”
“I like you. You know I like you.” He closed his mouth and looked away.
“I wouldn’t do that,” Camie said.
He snorted. “You would so. Remember when I told you that thing about the colours? And you told all the others?”
“I didn’t know you’d get so upset!” Camie said, angry. “Besides, it was funny. You make up crazy things sometimes. I didn’t think you were serious. I mean - dreaming that the whole world is red? No one has dreams like that, it’s stupid. And you said you can feel things in your head before they happen and that they feel like blue and green-”
“Yeah, okay,” Luke said, looking annoyed. “Even if it sounded stupid, you shouldn’t have told anyone. You knew they’d make fun of me. And it was personal.”
“I said I was sorry.”
“You didn’t mean it properly.” He glanced at her. “You still don’t.” Waving off her objection, he said, “Just forget it.” He nodded to a man standing in the shade as they passed into the main market area. “Hi, Ben.”
“Hello, Luke,” said Ben Kenobi. “Young Camie.” He nodded politely to them both. Camie narrowed her eyes and shuffled a step closer to Luke, who gave her a funny look.
“Come in to trade?” he said to Kenobi.
“Something like that,” the old man said. His robes were strange looking, and covered in dust. He looked like he’d made them himself then rolled in dirt for good measure.
Camie tugged Luke’s arm. He said, “Well, see you around,” to Kenobi, and let her pull him on.
“What?” he said to her when they were a few steps away.
She shivered and said, “He gives me the creeps.”
“Ben?” Luke looked back over his shoulder. “Old Ben? He’s harmless.”
“He’s crazy,” Camie said. “Some kind of weird religious hermit, you know. No one knows what he does out there. I’ve heard rumours that he goes out at night looking for people who have gotten lost in the desert-”
“That’s stupid,” Luke said, loudly and crossly.
“No, listen,” Camie said, annoyed herself, because she hadn’t finished her story. “That hut he lives in is supposed to be haunted. My stepdad’s friend even heard him talking to no one once, here in town, having a whole conversation. He said normally he’d laugh, but it made his hair stand on end, because he could feel something-”
“The effects of too much ale, probably.”
Camie glanced over her shoulder. “He’s watching us,” she said.
Luke looked back. “So? He’s harmless. He used to come around the farm sometimes to trade, when I was younger. And he saved me and Windy once. People just like to say he’s crazy because he does what they’re afraid to - live out there in the Wastes, all alone.”
“Maybe you should be his apprentice hermit, if you like the idea that much.” Camie dropped his arm as they stopped at a spices stall.
“Are you kidding? Being stuck where I am now is bad enough.” Luke pointed out some containers, which the stallholder, Kett Teriso’s aunt, wrapped. They bartered, Luke handed over his trade chit, and he and Camie crossed to the next stall.
“So has your uncle agreed to let you go to the academy this season?” Camie asked.
“No,” Luke said sullenly. He screwed up his nose at the wares on display and headed off toward a different stall. Camie lingered, running her eyes over the beaded necklaces. There was a pretty one with carved blue beads that she liked, but it was too expensive. She thought about pointing it out to Luke, but she doubted he could afford it either. She wasn’t even sure that the Larses paid him real wages.
With a sigh, she followed Luke, who didn’t appear to have noticed he’d left her behind. When she caught up, he was arguing with the textiles stallholder - old Tell’s wife, wasn’t she? - over the value of the brush-weaves he held. They eventually settled. Camie poked through the finer fabrics while he repeated the process with seedlings at the next stall.
Camie waited until they had walked back to his speeder, Luke distracted with his purchases, repeating them under his breath as he tried to work out if he’d remembered everything. “You still think you’re going to get to the academy?” she said casually.
Luke piled the purchases on the passenger seat. “Of course I am. Next season.”
Camie sighed. “See you later, Wormie.”
The wind whipped sand around her legs as she walked away, her skirt fluttering in the hot breeze, hair tendrilling around her face. She was quite pleased in the moment, and imagined Luke looking after her in confusion and longing. She didn’t look back, in case he wasn’t watching her at all.
----
She was sitting on Fixer’s lap when she next saw Luke. It was afternoon, almost night, and they were all at the station. The harvest season was nearing an end, days getting even hotter. Luke looked dusty when he came in, trailing behind Windy looking disgruntled.
“Hey, Wormie!” Fixer hailed him. “Pull up a seat! We’re celebrating.”
“What is there to celebrate?”
“Me’n Camie are gonna get married.”
She watched Luke from the edge of her eye. He crinkled his nose, lips twisting a little. “Aren’t you kind of young?” he said to her directly.
Camie narrowed her eyes. It wasn’t quite what she’d thought she might get in terms of reaction.
“Hey!” Fixer’s arm tightened around her. “She’s going to manage this place with me. We’ve got big plans. It’ll be great.” He pulled her in for a kiss. He tasted like ale.
“Congratulations,” Luke said, and turned and said something to Windy about taking T-16s out because the womp rats were getting bad again.
He went outside after a while. Camie waited, and when Fixer was in the middle of a long story about racing swoops in Mos Espa, she slipped out as well.
“Hey,” she called softly. He’d dropped down the metre or so to the ground, and was standing with his back to the building. He turned, and she sat on the edge of the rounded platform, clambering down to his level. He grabbed her hand to help her down, sand gritting between their fingers as they touched. He dropped her hand as soon as she reached the bottom. She was caught by how odd a gesture it was, and wondered if his uncle assisted his aunt like that.
“What do you want?” he said without enthusiasm.
“What are you doing?” She looked around at the empty landscape.
“Thought I’d watch the stars come out.”
She rolled her eyes. “Oh, Luke. Really?”
He gave her a look, one that wasn’t exactly friendly.
“Are you angry at me?” she asked playfully.
“No.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Why would you do that?” He looked at her, perplexed. “Do you want that? This?”
“Want what?”
He seemed to be searching for words, at last stabbing a hand towards the station, looming over them. “That thing, and Fixer - you’re giving up the rest of your life.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Yes, you are. It’s stupid.”
“Don’t call me stupid!” She glared at him. “You don’t know anything. What did you think I’d do, get married to you? Slave away on some stupid moisture farm for the rest of my life? Fixer’s manager of this place, and he’ll own it someday. He’s worth something. He’s got a future. A plan.”
Luke looked surprised, then indignant. “I’m not going to be a moisture farmer. I’m getting off this place, you know that. I’m going to get into the academy.”
“Oh, please.” Camie rolled her eyes, and was annoyed, because she knew he couldn’t see the effect in the dark. “You’ve been saying that since you were ten years old. You’re not there, are you?”
“I will be. Once my uncle-”
“No!” She thrust her hand at him, fingers brushing his worn tunic. He stepped back. “You won’t, Luke. Listen for once! You think you’re better than all of us, with your dreams and your plans, like we’re meant for this and you’re not. Let me tell you - it’s not that, at all. The difference is that you haven’t grown up enough to realise that this is what your life is. You’re never going to get off this world.”
“I am.”
She shook her head. “You won’t. You’re not good enough or smart enough. You don’t have money or connections. You’re just like the rest of us. Stuck here.”
“You’re the one who doesn’t know anything, Camie. I’m not going to be stuck here.”
“Yes, you are.”
“No, I’m not!” He looked away. “You might choose that, but I don’t.”
“Choose that?” She wheeled away, turning on her heel, presenting him with her profile, lifting her hands to her hair as she laughed sharply. It felt strange in her chest, a little rough, like sand accidentally swallowed. “I’m not going to waste my life dreaming, Luke. I’m going to make the best of what I have. And it’s going to be great.”
“Yeah,” Luke said. “I’m sure it will.”
He didn’t put scorn into his voice, which stung infinitely more, because she suspected on some level he was trying to be kind. She swung on him, eyes narrowed. “I’m going to have more than you ever will,” she said. “I won’t be some dirt-poor moisture farmer’s wife, patching my patches until there’s nothing original left, working and working and never complaining until the day I die a withered old husk. Not me.”
He looked at her. The light barely reached him, illuminating only his chin and a faint glint in the region of his eyes. She felt even angrier, unable to judge whether her thrusts were landing or sliding away. Fury skittered under her fingers, swirling a crescendo. “You just don’t see it,” she said savagely. “You’re eighteen. You said you’d be gone two years ago. You’re going to be forty, and you’ll still be here, penniless, with nothing, a moisture farmer like your uncle. All you’ll have is that - whatever it is. Pride or something, that makes you think you’re better than all this. And it’ll turn to bitterness in the end, because you never made it.”
Wind blew in the silence that fell. Her mouth felt odd, hollow with an edge of Fixer’s stale taste and the hard tang of the air.
Luke finally moved, a step back, another. “You’re wrong,” he said, quite calmly. “I’m going to leave this place. You’ll see. I’ll never come back.” He turned and walked away.
“You’re wrong,” Camie called. “You’ll rot here. Wormie you are, Luke. You’ll worm down in the sand and it’ll kill you!”
He didn’t come back. He didn’t respond at all. Camie sat in the dirt after he vanished. Her hands were shaking, so she hugged her knees.
When she looked up, there were a few stars in the sky, tiny sparkling pinpricks.
Camie watched them waver, blinked and blinked again. She laughed, once, then pressed her face knees and rocked.
----
She and Fixer had agreed from the start to wait a few years before getting married, so that there would be time to save money. Fixer’s mom didn’t have anything to contribute, and Camie’s stepfather could only afford a little. The wedding would have to be simple, but Camie was determined that it would be something that Anchorhead would remember.
Fixer said he’d get all the money they needed through some project he was working on down in the distribution chambers of the station, but when Camie had snuck down there, all she found was a hunk of spare parts and what looked like some kind of modified swoop. She had no idea how he thought he could make money off that thing.
She saw Luke a few times, at the Station or at Beggar’s Canyon. Without Biggs, there wasn’t much competition in the T-16 races. Fixer was a good mechanic - best this side of Mos Eisley, Camie felt - but he wasn’t in Luke and Biggs’ league when it came to racing. He could beat Deak and Windy, but Luke always won, even when it was clear he was barely trying.
Luke came bursting into the station one day in middle of the off-harvest season, blurting about battles and rebellions. He dragged them out into the blinding heat to stare up at two specks in orbit, and seemed crushed when nothing happened - just as he did every other time he imagined space battles over Tatooine. They trailed back into the relative cool of the station, leaving Luke squinting up through his macrobinoculars.
“Dumb kid,” Fixer grumbled.
“Now I’ve seen real space battles,” Biggs, back from the Academy before his first assignment, tugged at his tunic. It was nothing like what he used to wear. “If you ask me, Luke just saw flashes off the hulls of those ships. The suns, probably.”
“Wormie’s always seeing things,” Deak said. Windy laughed.
Camie laughed herself and glanced back as Luke lowered the binocs, features set in disappointment. He threw a glance towards the station reproachfully, and tugged at the brim of the floppy old hat he always wore before turning and trudging away.
Luke was always put out when no one believed his stories. He’d be back.
Over a week later, the wreckage of the Lars farm was discovered. There were two bodies, not three. At first, it was thought to have been a Tusken raid, though it was unheard of for them to attack a settlement. The Imperial garrison did nothing, and a handful of people from Anchorhead went out to bury the bodies.
Camie went with them, watching with her arms tightly crossed as Fixer and Deak and old Tell and big, broad-nosed Rendu carefully pulled the bodies clear of the sand which had begun to bury them already. The whole farm was ruined, the buildings blackened and destroyed with the fire and the smoke. Something in the underground garage had exploded.
This was not the work of Tuskens.
Then someone said that they’d seen Luke five days ago, in the company of that old lunatic Kenobi. Heading for Mos Eisley with two valuable droids.
The muttering started. Hadn’t that boy always been strange? Hadn’t he wanted to leave? Everyone knew Owen Lars despaired of him, and refused to allow him offworld. Maybe there’d been an argument. Maybe it was in cold blood.
Camie was furious. She rounded on anyone she heard spreading the rumour, and demanded whether they knew Luke Skywalker. Yes? No? Only a moron would think that he could murder anyone. Especially his aunt and uncle. Yes, she meant that as an insult. Chuba schutta wata to you too, wermo.
A few weeks later word began to trickle in via Mos Eisley about the Rebellion blowing up a new battle station built by the Empire. People gathered in small groups in the alleys, breaking up whenever patrolling stormtroopers came into view.
“I think it was Luke,” Camie said to Fixer, kicking her heels as she watched him working on the old swoop in the station underbasement.
“I dunno,” he said doubtfully, tightening something. He groped around behind him. “Deak said the spacer he was talking to in Mos Eisley said the guy’s name was Starkiller or something.”
Camie leaned and picked up the hydrospanner on Fixer’s left, placing it in his hand. He gave her a smile, and kept working. “It kind of sounds similar,” she said. “And they said he was from the Outer Rim and had just arrived with the Rebellion. Old Teska Tell said she heard he’d never flown an X-wing before.”
“She also said she heard his father was a Jedi, remember?” Fixer put the ’spanner in his mouth and picked up the wrangler, spinning it absently in his hand as he eyed at the parts.
“Well…” Camie shrugged. “No one really knows anything about Luke’s father.”
Fixer gave her an incredulous look, taking the hydrospanner out of his mouth. “Little Wormie? The son of a Jedi?”
“Remember how fast he used to take those turns through Beggar’s Canyon?”
Fixer’s face darkened - probably with the memory of losing to Luke. “Yeah.”
Camie shrugged again. “Or maybe his father wasn’t a Jedi and Luke’s just gotten it into his head for some reason. That wouldn’t surprise me either.”
Fixer grunted. He kept working on the swoop, but Camie could see something was distracting him. Usually his concentration was intensely focused when he was working: there was a certain look he got in his eyes, as something in his head shifted to repulsors and gears and how it all fitted together. She was the only person, he said, who didn’t put him off when he was working. Everyone else, he ordered out.
After a while, he stopped what he was doing, and gave her a troubled look. “Camie,” he said, “you know Luke might not be alive, right?”
She tossed her hair. “Of course he is.”
“Chances are it was the Imperials that burned the Lars homestead,” he said. “Remember all that activity a few weeks ago? There were stormies everywhere.”
She’d figured the same, but was surprised he’d noticed. Fixer noticed more than he let on, she had realised lately. “So?”
“So we don’t know for sure that those two bodies we found were Beru and Owen. It could have been Luke and Beru, and the stormies might have dragged Owen off for questioning. Or that might have happened to Luke.”
Camie shook her head. “No. Someone saw him with old Ben Kenobi. He got away. He did what he said he would.”
Fixer rubbed his forehead, smearing oil there. “Okay,” he said. “I hope so. I mean… we were hard on him sometimes. But he was all right.”
Camie brushed sand from her skirt, and lifted her chin. “Yeah,” she said. “He was okay.”
Her mother got sick that harvest, and died a month before the new year. Camie stood by her stepfather as they lowered her mother’s body into the sand. Fixer stood on her other side, as he’d stayed with her every day while her mother was sick and dying. He didn’t speak, but his hand was there to hold hers as the sand settled. He helped her get her stepfather home and he sat with her that night on the back step of her stepfather’s house, home to the three of them since she’d been small, as the tears - clumsy, heaving tears that were undramatic except in the way they threatened to rip her apart - finally came.
They were married a few months later. His swoop turned out to be an old podracer, which he sold somewhere in Mos Espa for a price sufficient to pay for their wedding and have credits left over. Her wedding skirt was made in Mos Eisley, traditional blue, with Fixer wearing a pale sash and fidgeting, his palm sweaty as he took her hand. His grip was firm, as if he was afraid she’d vanish if he let go. If his eyes were a little watery as he said his vows, she didn’t mention it, and neither did he.
Most of Anchorhead turned out for the wedding, and it was the biggest event of the season. Camie showed off her skirt to full advantage, smiled and gleamed and held Fixer’s hand throughout. When he kissed her, the sky flashed blindingly in her eyes, bright and bleak and true, and Camie’s eyes watered. Her stepfather hugged her, and then a coverter blew its fuse in the station, and she went with Fixer to repair it.
In the ensuing months, an alien by the name of Throgg took over the Lars moisture farm - the property had been settled on him via what general authority held to be genuine deeds, so it seemed increasingly likely that Luke was alive somewhere. Huff Darklighter was none too pleased, but was diverted by the news of Biggs’s death. He took it hard, but made sure it was widely known that Biggs had died a hero in the battle where the Death Star, the Empire’s newest weapon, was destroyed. The local Moff being in his pocket meant that Huff had little to fear in the way of repercussions.
An Imperial officer appeared at the end of harvest, asking questions about local boys who had left in the last year. When little information was forthcoming, he began to remark on the number of Rebels coming from the region, on insurrectionist breeding grounds and on consequences. Before he left, he had Luke’s name.
Camie had been married a year and was pregnant when she heard that Luke was on the planet - or had been. Jabba’s palace was in ruins before the story came together, how someone had seen him in Mos Eisley and Rendu had noticed a change in Jawa movements out on the Wastes and Jora had seen a landspeeder heading towards the hut that once belonged to Kenobi.
By that time stories about Luke Skywalker, hero of the Rebels, were beginning to trickle through from the spaceport in Mos Eisley. There were wild tales about him being a Jedi, and leading Rebel fleets in battle. Camie thought most of it a load of spaceshim, given how many times it had to have been repeated before it reached Anchorhead. But still.
The destruction of Jabba’s Palace and the mystery surrounding the event heightened Luke’s celebrity. Camie began to suspect that half of Anchorhead had forgotten that they’d actually known Luke, once. Maybe that short, impractical boy they’d watched grow up was all too easily swallowed by the image of a hero who waved a glowing sword and destroyed battle stations and came back in disguise with a beautiful woman and a dashing man and a Wookiee and two droids to bring down Jabba and his corrupt empire.
Camie found herself remembering that boy, though. In her memory he was self-absorbed and immature and petulant and still generous, open in his emotions in a way that reached out and didn’t care how many times it was hurt or knocked down. She wondered why he’d never come to see all of them after his aunt and uncle died, never said goodbye. Never visited on his return to say he was alive, to see what they were doing. Then she realised he probably thought, back then and now, that he had nothing here. Because he’d always been looking for a way in, but never found it. They’d never given it to him, because he’d never wanted anything they did.
Her pregnancy was a difficult one, complicated by one of the hottest seasons in years. Fixer stomped around and swore at people and the power converters ran down because they weren’t being maintained. The women who’d been her mother’s friends pressed cool fingers to her pulse and pinched her skin and argued over her colour, and Fixer took a speeder to Mos Eisley and got a medic, who took one look and insisted she give birth in the med centre in Mos Eisley. They travelled back in Fixer’s speeder, and Fixer hovered as she slept until she got sick of it and ordered him to find her some decent clothes other than those she’d come in.
The birth was long. Most of it was a haze, later, but she remembered Fixer stroking her hair and whispered for her to hold on in a voice she hardly recognised as his, and she remembered the cries of her son when she finally held him.
In the confusion of the birth and the return to Anchorhead a few weeks later, they almost lost the news of upheaval that was gradually trickling through from the rest of the galaxy. Teskar Tell said she’d heard the Rebels had built their own Death Star and used it on the Empire, while Windy said he’d heard that the Empire were the ones with the Death Star, built to use against the Rebels, but that it had blown up and taken out the Imperial fleet. Then someone said Darth Vader and the Emperor were dead, and someone else heard it independently, and Ty Blackhill who worked out on one of the Darklighter homesteads said that the HoloNet had been reporting the Emperor and Vader were dead before it was shut down.
Fixer came in one night, late back from a repair to the backup units east of Anchorhead. “They’re rioting in Mos Espa,” he said to her. “People started celebrating and the stormtroopers moved in.” He pulled off his boots and looked at her. “I heard someone say that it was Luke who killed them. Vader and the Emperor, I mean.”
“I heard that too,” Camie said. She was standing near the open door, watching the darkness outside. The baby was asleep. They’d name him Laze, the name Fixer had inherited from his own father, who’d died when he was a boy. His naming day wouldn’t come until he was six months old, but Camie hadn’t ever cared much for ceremony.
“You think it’s true?”
Camie shrugged. “Them that support the Empire are remembering how he used to hunt womp rats and drive his speeder too fast as they whisper about the Lars deaths. The rest talk about him like he was some kind of undiscovered wonder in our midst. I heard old Tell talking about how she sold him weaves.”
“So?”
“So none of it’s really true.” She rubbed her eyes and left her hand there, fingers pressed to her temples. “Not that it seems to matter.”
“Are you all right?”
She sighed. “I’m tired.” She let her hand fall. “He just never seemed like a killer to me.”
“He’s a Rebel,” Fixer said. “They do that. And they say he’s a Jedi, now, too. Besides, the Emperor and Vader are - you know.”
“I guess he got the life he wanted,” Camie said, looking out at the stars gleaming in the black of the sky. “I wonder if he’s happy with it.”
Fixer’s chair creaked as he got up, the clasps on his belt clinking as he walked over. He touched her hesitantly, his hands on her shoulders, stroking. He angled himself so that he could see her face, looked at her for a moment, and then said, “Are you?”
She could hear the worry in his voice, though he was doing his best not to let it through. The rough skin of his fingers caught at the fabric of her nightgown.
The stars twinkled down at the sand, pretty, cold, and so far away. Camie smiled to herself; not reflective or joyful, exactly, but neither bitter. She said, “Probably.”
Fixer’s breath teased the hair by her ear, a sigh given as thoughtlessly as the wind that teased the sand to life in the drifting piles below.
In the warm, safe darkness of the house, Laze woke and began to cry. Fixer stretched, belt clanking, boots creaking. “I’ll get him.”
He went. Laze quieted. Camie was left on her own with the stars, in the dark.
She shook her head - maybe at Luke, wherever he was, or maybe at the stupid girl and the idiot boy who had argued down in the night shadows of the building a handful of years ago - and, with a last look upwards, she went inside.
--end--