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“Ben?”
Luke crept into the dim hovel, shining his torch around to see if there was anyone inside.
“Mister Kenobi? It’s Luke Skywalker. From the Lars’ farm.”
This had been a mistake. If Uncle Owen woke up and realized he was gone, much less that he’d taken the speeder across the Wastes in the middle of the night, he would be grounded until the suns burned out. But the sand flu had been particularly rough this season and he’d woken up unable to shake the feeling that someone should check on old Ben, all alone in his strange hut in the middle of nowhere, so he’d taken a chance and left anyway.
But he couldn’t hear or see any signs of life, and if he found a dead body in here he was going to puke.
He crept inside, casting the torch over the small living area. It was messier than he’d expected, with dirty dishes and clothes scattered about. There was a curtained doorway leading further in, probably to a bedroom, but Luke hesitated. Surprising a sleeping hermit was a good way to get killed, not to mention he was still really, really worried about finding a dead man in there.
From beyond the doorway Luke heard a soft moan. Tension he hadn’t realized he was carrying bled out of his shoulders.
“Ben?” he called again. “Are you alright?”
No answer.
“I’m coming in, ok?”
Luke pushed aside the curtain covering the bedroom doorway and reared back as the metallic smell of illness overwhelmed him. Maybe he’d been right to come here after all. He wasn’t worried about himself - he’d had his own mild bout of sand flu a few weeks back - but Aunt Beru had told him this season’s wave was hitting offworlders much harder. They don’t have the desert in their bones, she’d said, and it was obvious from Ben’s accent, the way he walked, the way he dressed - everything about him, really - that he wasn’t from here.
Luke set the torch on the small table next to Ben’s bed and turned the light up a bit. The old man’s face was sunken and pale, with dark circles under his closed eyes. His breathing was shallow, and Luke could feel the heat radiating off of him without even touching him.
This was bad.
From his pack, he pulled a flask of mushroom tea. There was nothing to do for sand flu except keep the fever down and hope for the best, but desert people swore by a strong brew of desert mushrooms and herbs. Aunt Beru always kept some on hand for emergencies, and hopefully tomorrow she’d agree with him that this had qualified.
“Ben, I brought you something to drink, ok?”
No answer, but when Luke lifted the man’s head and tipped some of the liquid into his mouth, he swallowed it down weakly. That was a good sign. Hopefully he’d be able to stave off dehydration until Ben was awake again.
He set the tea down after a few sips, then cracked open a portable cooling pack and set it on Ben’s forehead. He hadn’t brought a temperature sensor, but the man’s fever seemed dangerously high. If he couldn’t get it down soon, there wouldn’t be anything else he could do.
Luke continued giving Ben sips of tea periodically, until at last his eyes flickered open, crusty and bloodshot. It was a relief at first, until his gaze met Luke’s and Luke realized Ben wasn’t really seeing him. The old man’s mouth moved soundlessly for a moment as tears gathered in the corners of his eyes. He fumbled for Luke’s hand, took it in his own, and squeezed it weakly.
“Don’t worry,” Luke said. “You’re going to be alright.”
“I’m so glad you’re here,” Ben said. His voice was thready, and lacking the sparkle and cultured accent that had always caught Luke’s attention.
“I woke up and couldn’t stop worrying about you,” Luke admitted. “It’s a good thing I got here when I did. You’re pretty sick, but you’ll be ok.”
“I hoped you would come,” Ben murmured. “I wasn’t sure, after everything I’ve done…”
Luke groaned inwardly. The old man was delirious. “Try to rest, ok?”
“I’m sorry,” Ben said, his voice cracking into a sob. “I’m so sorry, Anakin.”
Luke froze. “What did you say?”
He didn’t mean...he couldn’t possibly mean…
“My brother...I loved you so much.”
Luke checked the cold pack with shaking fingers. It was still cool, which meant it was, hopefully, still bringing Ben’s fever down.
Because Luke had questions. Had Ben known - loved - Anakin Skywalker? And what had he done to him, to a man he called his brother, that he felt so guilty about?
Ben squeezed Luke’s hand weakly again. “Please, Anakin,” he said. “Forgive me.”
“I’m not Anakin,” Luke said and moved the cold pack from Ben’s forehead to drape over his neck. “I’m Luke - Anakin’s son. I live near Anchorhead. You know me.”
“Luke…”
“That’s right,” Luke said. He leaned forward, trying to see if Ben was back with him. “Did you know my father too?”
Ben’s shoulders hitched again with a half-sob. “You would have loved him.”
“I know,” Luke said, and a familiar grief settled into his lungs. “I already do.”
“He’s amazing, Anakin,” Ben said, and Luke winced. He didn’t mean Luke would have loved his father, he meant that Anakin would have loved his son. The words settled heavily over Luke’s heart and he wondered if there was any truth to them.
“You should get some rest,” Luke tried again. “We can talk about Anakin - about my father - when you wake up. And I’m sure whatever you did, he would forgive you.”
Ben shook his head. “The pain you must live in, every day…”
Luke bit his lip against the tears that had sprung up suddenly in his eyes. To have information about his father dangled in front of him, just out of reach, was impossibly frustrating. And on top of all that, Ben could still not make it through this and whatever he was talking about would die with him.
The more Ben begged for forgiveness, the more certain Luke was that something terrible had happened. A part of him didn’t want to know, but now that Ben had cracked this door open he didn’t think he could close it again.
“What sort of pain?”
Ben’s mouth moved silently for a few seconds and he shook his head. Luke sighed. He shouldn’t push too hard. He was meant to be helping Ben recover, not interrogating him while he was critically ill.
“Never mind,” he said quietly. “We can talk more when your fever comes down.”
“Luke…”
Luke leaned forward, fear gnawing at him. If he was about to hear Ben’s last words, he didn’t know what he would do. “I’m right here, Ben.”
“Luke…”
“Ben?”
“I took him, Anakin. I had to. Padme was dead and you were lost...I’m sorry…”
Ben’s words burned into Luke’s skin and he stumbled out of his chair, away from the bed. “ What?”
He grabbed the back of his chair to steady himself, but his hands were shaking too badly and he sank to the floor.
He had misheard. He must have misheard. Or misunderstood. Because there was no way…
Had he been…
He couldn’t say the word, not even to himself. It wasn’t possible.
Did his aunt and uncle know? Had they been involved? Padme - his mother? - was dead, but his father was lost? Did lost mean alive?
A sound escaped him, somewhere between a snarl, a sob and a curse.
“What did you do?” he whispered, his voice anguished.
“Didn’t have a choice,” Ben murmured.
“What did you do? ”
But there was no answer. Ben’s breathing had evened out and Luke could see beads of sweat forming around his hairline and on his cheeks. If he was sweating, his fever was likely coming down.
And if he lived through this, Luke would have answers.
Luke stayed like that, sitting on the floor with his back to the wall, listening to Ben breathe, for hours. The suns came up and the heat of the desert began to seep in through the windows. Luke changed the cold pack on Ben’s neck and fed him more tea, numbly going through the motions while trying very hard not to feel or think anything. If he let his mind wander through too many possibilities, too many scenarios and what-ifs, he would start to panic. And if there was one thing his aunt and uncle had always taught him, it was never to panic when you were away from home.
Towards midday, when the suns should have been the hottest, Luke realized he was shivering. His fingers and toes had gone numb and cold was settling like a blanket around his shoulders. It could have been residual panic, or the fact that he’d now gone almost a full day without eating, or maybe he was coming down with a second bout of the sand flu himself.
But it felt like something more than that.
Ben shifted on his bed, rolled onto his side and looked down at Luke. His eyes were red-rimmed, but his gaze was clearer. “Hello, Luke,” he said in a rough voice.
“Did you kidnap me?”
Ben, who had always seemed so passive to Luke, flinched like he had been struck. “Where did you hear that?”
Before Luke could answer, the curtain in the bedroom doorway was ripped from its line and the man from the cover of the Academy application materials - Darth Vader - filled the doorway. The cold was everywhere now, crawling over Luke’s skin and inside his bones, but as soon as he tried to back away the man levelled a finger at him.
“Do not move.”
The rolling echo of his deep voice filled the room and pinned Luke to the floor. Ben tried to sit up, but collapsed back onto the bed.
“Pathetic,” Vader said. His voice was dripping with contempt. “You spend all night intruding on my meditations and I find you bedridden, being cared for by a child?”
“I’m fifteen,” Luke snapped automatically. “I’m not a child.” Inside, his mind was racing. What did Vader mean, intruding on his meditations? Ben had spent most of the night locked in the grip of fever dreams, except for the few delirious minutes he’d spent implying that he’d kidnapped Luke and done something potentially unforgivable (on top of the kidnapping!) to his father.
Vader swiveled his masked head down to stare at him. Luke, for all that he felt frozen in place by that fierce stare, glared right back.
“I suppose this weak old man is your father, boy?”
Luke shook his head. “Just a friend. Sounds like he knew my father, though,” he added pointedly, turning his glare from Vader to Ben.
“I do know your father, Luke.” At that moment, as that present tense word - know - rattled around Luke’s insides, as he stared at Ben thinking not dead, just lost, Ben looked up at Vader and said, “Anakin, this is Luke Skywalker. Your son.”
Luke looked up at Darth Vader and Darth Vader looked down at Luke and for a moment time stood still. Then Vader whirled back to Ben and hissed, “what did you do?”
“He kidnapped me when I was a baby,” Luke said dully. His father was alive. His father was alive and here and all he felt was cold. “He told me last night, when I was trying to get his fever down. He thought I was...he thought I was you, I guess.”
Vader left the doorway and, slowly, knelt in front of him. Luke stared at him, at his broad armored shoulders, at the severe lines of his mask, at the red tint of his eyeplates. He could hear servos whirring in his joints. Without thinking, he reached up and touched the control plate on Vader’s chest, being mindful not to hit any of the buttons or switches.
“Did Ben do this to you too?”
“Yes.”
“He seemed pretty sorry about it last night,” Luke said. “If that matters.”
Vader rested one gloved hand on Luke’s cheek, tracing his cheekbone with his thumb. His other hand came up to cover Luke’s hand on his control plate.
Luke realized there were tears on his cheeks and turned his face into Vader’s - his father’s - palm.
“The only thing that matters now, my son, is you.”