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“Take my room and rest, I know you've been through a lot these past few days. Take a breather. The party will be here when you need it, if you need it.” Leia had offered him after he’d gotten back, when she’d seen his low sunken eyes and general unwillingness for loud music and alcoholic drinks. She led him to her nice quarters. Still in his flight undersuit. He now lay on her bed. In sheets softer than anything he’d ever felt. They smelled of her and were definitely not the original set, not stiff cheap sheets. Or the stiff blankets he'd grown up with. He lay facing the wall, away from the door. If Leia came back she might discern that he was sleeping and wouldn’t ask any questions. He’d done his duty, become a war hero in three days, lost four very important people, and probably more somewhere. He had saved every life on this base, and yet he couldn’t celebrate.
There was something off, Biggs was dead, whatever they had and he knew what they had, he had the ring to remind him of what they had. Was gone, blown up into dust. Not to mention he had no home to go back to, he could try to go back to Tatooine, try and restart the farm, maybe marry but did he want that? Did he want to throw what all of this could be away? No he surely didn’t. He wasn’t ready for it but this was all he had ever wanted. He had always wanted adventure. And was this adventure. Taking lives to give lives? Losing the people who took you in, who held you close and loved you more than anything.
Luke looks at the ring, it's nothing special, and the one he got for Biggs wasn’t either. Just a little reminder. A cheap stone, and that was okay. He didn’t mind what it was more so what it represented. He didn’t want his or Biggs’ family to go into debt. Neither of them had glorious amounts of water, the thing that would have sealed a marriage right away. Even a glass of water is the greatest dowry you could imagine.
He took off the ring. What did it matter? The man was dead and the ring he bought for him up to dust, the dream of running away to a better place was dead too. How nice is it to get engaged and your fiance runs away?
“I promise when the time is right we’ll be together somewhere and we can finally get married.” Liar. He knew why they had done it. You got married young so you could pool your money and forbid a bad storm or a gang's wrath- not have to die alone. “I will always love you, promise I'll write.” Biggs had also promised, but when they met again they didn’t even kiss, just a quick hug, a hug for friends. He had promised to write, but everything was so expensive, and it's not like Biggs wrote back to him much either.
Did he bury the ring? Drown it perhaps? How ironic. Did he give it away once he found a new love- a few candidates already up for that. No, that would have been rude. He took it off and set it in his pocket. Maybe he shouldn’t think about what all this meant. Just gloss over it.
He began to trace the small flowers of Leia's sheets when the door whizzed open. Luke was quick to turn it down, “No, no go away. I’m alright.”
He didn't look, didn't care. He thinks he already knew.
“Sorry kid, I know you’re moping, but her highness asked me to get you some water.” Han answered, coming in and standing in front of him with a glass, much like the ones he had at his old house, filled maybe an inch and a half from the brim with water.
Water. It called his name, it brightened his eyes. To him it was the most expensive thing he could indulge in. Did Leia know? He had brought up Tatooine maybe once or twice in brief conversation. She was certainly smart but did she know? That although Tatooine had no real religion other than whatever the sand people practiced, that water was saintly, a deity in itself without the need of being personified. That water was more expensive by the sip than any expensive liquor.
He stared at the cup, jaw agape, not caring if it embarrassed himself in front of Han. It was like gold, it was the rarest jewel he could find.
“You okay kid? I know you don’t get much of this. Take a sip.” Han persisted. Trying to hand it over. When Luke still remained starstruck he set it down on the coffee table.
He knew how expensive that water was, back home on his farm they’d harvest maybe half a glass a season, never enough to pay them back. The few vegetables and things made it so that he grew up always poor. A few big payouts but then nothing. He had drunk water before, some little sips on birthdays and things but never a glass. A glass could pay for their full house farm and more. His body had survived without it, something Tatooine locals or common visitors have to get used to. Its milk and alcohol as far as the eye can see and well it was only milk for him for a long time.
He silently prayed to an unknown god for what to do. Did he drink it? He was a bit parched and it would probably be nice. But would he then be irreversibly changed- if he wasn’t already. Were Beru and Owen, and his ancestors up somewhere cheering him on or pushing him back?
“I don’t think I can, I’m sorry. Thank you or Leia or whatever for it.”
“It's just a glass of water.”
“ No .” He insisted.
He can remember being little and Beru telling him bedtime stories of water, whispering in his ear deep pools of cool blue water, and he knew these pools existed somewhere. School hadn’t taught him much but everytime he saw photos of other planets he would marvel by himself or with friends. Look at the vegetation. The water! Natural pools! The first day they got here, after Ben died he had a real shower. With water, that had scared him. Running water and enough that you can have a shower? A shower that's unlimited. How much water? How much? How much waste? It felt dumb to ask these questions in a war zone so he hadn’t. The guy showering across from him sure thought he was dumb.
Back home you had two, maybe three different kinds of soap you used to take a dry shower, a dry soap, a wet one and maybe one mixed into a cloth. This routine made it so that you were never fully apart from the sand. And as much as he had hated the feeling of the sand coating his skin he had gotten used to it. That shower washed off every speck.
It was not just a glass of water, no matter whatever Han or anyone else thought or said.it was everything in a little glass.
Han wasn’t patient. “Okay, drink it or don’t drink it I don’t care, see you kid.”
“What if I throw up?”
Han sighed, “That's plausible. Want me to stick around?”
He nods and picks up the glass. “Heavier than I thought.”
Han laughs. “Take a sip kid.”
Luke takes a sip, then another and then most of the glass is gone. He braces himself and then all of the glass is gone. He sets it back on the coffee table.
He wonders how Biggs felt, probably experiencing the exact same cultural shocks he has, flowing water. Practically endless. And it makes Luke miss him, more than he had before the water, before Han got here.
He gets the gag reflex maybe fifteen minutes later, of course. He threw up when they first went to hyperspace. Why not throw up now. Han to his credit holds back the long parts of his hair so they don’t get wet. When he's done he sits back, and places his hand to his forehead.
“You gave me a glass of water? Do you know what that means?”
“No but by that smirk I'm sure it's something interesting.”
“Well it's the rarest thing, equivalent to a gemstone. Basically like an engagement ring.”
“Oh, Kid, well..”
Luke laughs, “No worries, let me get over my prior engagement first.”
That shocks Han, stuttering back a bit to the sink where he dips a cloth in water for Luke to dry his face. And he does it half there half in his head. “Your prior engagement?”
“He's dead, dont worry about it.” Luke says maybe coming to terms with it, maybe learning to breathe through it and smile a bit, crack a joke. Maybe..
“Oh you're talking about the guy with the mustache. Sorry for your loss.”
Luke cringes. “He only grew that after he left home. I would not have agreed to that.”
Han nods. Mentally noting it down. “Good to know.” He hands Luke the cloth and he places it on the back of his head.
“I didn’t take you away from the party did I?”
“It was boring without you, I mean- everyone is celebrating you but you aren’t there. And when people come asking where you are as if I'm your best friend or something..well it was getting annoying making up excuses.”
“Come on, let's go.”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah, give the people what they want.”
So they walk out, and drink. And the rebellion's new golden boy gets a lot of attention. Questions and shameless flirting from all different kinds of people. In the morning he throws up again, drinks some water. Showers and gets on with his life. And as he ages he comes to think of it more and more as just a glass of water.