Whisper Your Weakness

Torm Loneozner risked one quick glance back over his shoulder. His brother Trent, and Trent’s friend Crim Pendragon glared at him, waving their hands fiercely, telling him without words that he’d better not chicken out. Torm swallowed nervously and turned around, concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other as he walked towards the remnants of a burned-out dwelling.

Torm had been pestering his older brother for weeks to let him tag along with him and Crim and their friends on their many adventures - or what Torm hoped were adventures - on the desert planet of Tatooine. Younger than Trent by three years, and annoyingly small for his age, Torm was desperate to have someone to befriend. Sometimes his dad made Trent take him along, but Torm just knew if he could do this, the dare they’d given him, then Trent and Crim would like having him in their little club, and they’d invite him along willingly.

The Lars homestead had been abandoned after the family had been killed there some dozen or so years ago. Now, of course, all the youngsters that had grown up since that time believed the place to be haunted. Torm didn’t really believe in spirits, but it had become the standard rite of passage for those on the cusp of adolescence to spend one night in the house. They were allowing Torm some leeway, since he was only ten, and letting him stay just for two hours.

Even that might be more than I can handle, the boy thought nervously as he got ever closer to the building. No, I can do this, I can! I’m brave! He tried to keep that thought firmly in his mind as he walked slowly around the edge of the house to the entrance on the far side. He came to a stumbling halt at what he saw.

There was a ship there! It wasn’t very big, only large enough for two, perhaps three passengers, but it was a ship that Torm knew he’d never seen before. Anxiously, he stepped back around and tried to signal to Trent and Crim. They were obviously unable to see the ship from their side of the house, where they were crouching behind their speederbikes, and not paying him the slightest bit of attention.

He hollered to them for just a moment before he stopped himself. That was probably not such a good idea, as whoever owned the ship was probably still in the house. Torm bit his lip in agitation, pondering what he should do. If he backed out of this and went running back to his brother now, Trent would never let him hang out with his group.

Well, a ship meant something alive and not a ghost, at the very least. There was nothing around here that a thief or a slaver would want, so maybe it was just someone who was lost and looking for directions. Telling himself to be brave, Torm started down the shallow steps into the courtyard of the house.

His heart was pounding in his chest as he stepped through a doorway into the house itself. It was mostly still intact, the kitchen seeming to have taken most of the damage. Torm wondered if he should call out to see if there was indeed anyone here, but he found his throat frozen and utterly silent. Walking slowly down the narrow hallway, he turned into the first room he came to.

There was a small trunk at the end of a tiny bed and Torm walked curiously over to it, the fact that there might be strangers in the house floating right out of his mind. Opening the trunk, he could tell that it seemed to have been ransacked, probably by Jawas looking for anything mechanical that they could sell. Pushed over to one side of the trunk was an intricate model of a T-16 skyhopper.

“Wizard,” Torm breathed as he picked the model up. Turning it over in his hands, he could see that it had been put together with a lot of skill and care, certainly better than any model Torm himself had tried to do.

A sudden funny prickling at the back of his neck made him almost drop the model and he started to turn around. But before he’d begun the motion, a strong hand fell onto his shoulder and a frightening voice thundered in his ears.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

Torm attempted to get a glimpse at the monster that held him but all he could see was a dark cloak and two burning eyes. He screamed in absolute terror.

************************************

Trent Loneozner was glaring fiercely at his best friend. He was sure that Crim was cheating in their gambling game somehow, but he just couldn’t figure out how he was doing it. So far, it had cost Trent thirty-five credits, and if his dad found out about that...well, it wouldn’t be pretty.

Crim was smirking at him as he picked the dice up to roll once again. The still air was suddenly rent by his little brother’s terrified cry. Startled, Crim and Trent stood up from behind the speederbikes, glancing towards the old Lars homestead.

“That little bantha turd. I knew he wouldn’t be able to do it!” Crim said smugly.

Trent frowned slightly. He had been tormenting his little brother almost since the day the boy had been born, enough to be very familiar with all his cries of aggravation, fear, and anger. Something didn’t sound quite right about that cry, but he was hesitant to mention his doubts to Crim. He didn’t want to sound like a girl, after all.

As they watched, Torm’s head came into view as he scrambled up the stairs. A half second later, a figure draped in a voluminous black cloak swarmed up behind him and grabbed him by the shoulders, pulling him back down into the Lars house.

Crim and Trent both screamed in shock and fear, all pretense of manly bravado gone. Crim jumped up and ran to leap onto his speederbike.

“What are you doing?! We can’t leave my brother in there!” Trent screamed.

“What are the two of us gonna do? We need to go get help!” Crim retorted.

With that, he started up the speederbike and sped away as if a krayt dragon was on his tail. Remembering the menacing figure that had captured his brother, Trent thought this might be worse. But Crim was right, there was nothing he could do to help Torm by himself. Reluctantly, he climbed onto his speederbike and started it. He glanced one more time at the house that he’d carelessly sent his brother into.

“I’ll be back, Torm. I’ll get dad and I’ll be back and then we’ll see what that creep has to say!” he vowed.

*****************************************

Laze Loneozner, or Fixer as he was known to everyone in Anchorhead, cursed as he pulled a fistful of wires out of the vaporator he was trying to repair. The Darklighters needed this thing by the beginning of the harvest or they probably wouldn’t bring him any more of their business. And Fixer needed Huff Darklighter’s business, as he was about the only one who could actually pay his bill on time. Unfortunately, the blasted machine was not cooperating with him.

He leaned back and wiped the sweat off his brow with one greasy hand, releasing a sigh as he did so. Just as he was about to dive back into the inner workings of the annoying pile of metal, his older son and the Pendragon kid came running into the shop, screaming something incoherent at the top of their lungs.

It was several minutes before Fixer could get the boys to calm down enough to make sense of the words that were mixed with equal amounts of crying. He doubted their tale for just a moment, before deciding that only the truth could have gotten Trent this upset. Trent wasn’t one to normally get hysterical over nothing.

Figuring they didn’t have time to go get the local authorities - who were pretty much useless anyway - Fixer hollered at his assistant and old friend, Deak, to come help him get Torm back from whoever had made the bad choice to mess with one of his kids.

The two of them grabbed a couple of blaster rifles and jumped into Fixer’s landspeeder. Of course, first he had to make Trent promise to go home and tell his mother, Camie, what had happened, just in case something did go wrong.

All sorts of grim pictures of what may have already gone wrong flashed through Fixer’s mind as the landspeeder raced over the sands towards the old Lars place. And hadn’t he told the boys to stay away from there anyway? If Torm was all right, he and Trent were going to be confined to their rooms for at least a standard month. Fixer didn’t want to consider the possibility that the boy might not be all right.

When they pulled up to the homestead, there was nothing to indicate that anything was wrong. The place was almost eerily silent, in fact. Fixer and Deak got out of the landspeeder and, cradling the blaster rifles to their chests, crept down the stairs that led into the home.

He could hear someone talking and Fixer grimaced as he let out a slow breath, preparing to charge into the house and find out who had his son. That was when he realized that it was Torm that was doing the talking. And he wasn’t just talking, he was chattering away in the manner that Torm did when he was bugging Fixer about the latest holobook he’d read.

Fixer and Deak shot each other an uncertain glance. As they were standing there, momentarily at a loss as to what to do, someone else spoke up.

“You can come in, Fixer. Your son is fine,” a man’s voice said.

Fixer was so startled, he almost dropped the rifle, but he managed to keep it in his hands somehow as he stepped into the room. Torm sat at on the sagging couch in the living room, the only piece of furniture that remained. He beamed at his father and jumped up to run across the room to hug him.

“Dad! Hi! I didn’t mean to worry you, but I got scared but it was silly cause I know Luke wouldn’t really hurt me, but anyway you’ll never guess who this guy is!” he chattered excitedly.

Fixer stared at the man standing on the other side of the room. He was not much taller than the last time Fixer had seen him...how many years ago had it been? The kid’s hair was darker, but his eyes were still a bright blue, though more serious than Fixer remembered them ever being. Astonished, he propped the blaster rifle against the wall as he absently patted Torm on the back with one hand. Deak peeked around his shoulder, the same expression of surprise in his eyes as he followed Fixer’s lead and set his own rifle beside that of his boss.

“Wormie?” Fixer asked in disbelief.

Luke’s expression didn’t change, but his eyes cooled a bit more, if that were possible. Fixer noted that he held some sort of metal tube in his hand, which he hooked to his belt, but only after the blaster rifles had been discarded by his guests.

“I prefer Luke, if you don’t mind,” he said calmly.

“Yeah, his name’s not Wormie, it’s Luke Skywalker, Dad! Don’t you know who Luke Skywalker is?” Torm asked.

“Well, yeah, of course I do, Son. He grew up here on Tatooine. Wormie’s just a nickname we used to call him,” Fixer said, a little uncomfortably. “How’ve you been, uh, Luke? Haven’t seen you around these parts in a long while.”

“Da-aad,” Torm groaned with a pre-teen roll of his eyes. “Of course he hasn’t been around here much. He’s a Jedi Master! He’s been busy training all the new Jedi since he single-handedly crushed the Empire by blowing up the Death Star and striking down the Emperor and Darth Vader, restoring peace and freedom to the galaxy!”

At that, Fixer was amused to note that Luke blushed slightly. Maybe he hadn’t changed all that much after all.

“I wouldn’t say single-handedly, Torm,” Luke said quietly. “The Alliance fought long and hard before I joined them and they certainly continued to fight afterwards. The end of the Empire was brought about by the struggle and sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of beings, not just me.”

“Huh,” Torm said thoughtfully. “Well, that was what it said on the back of ‘The Savior of the Galaxy’, my latest holobook about you.”

Luke coughed a little nervously. “Yes, well, those holobooks have been known to exaggerate somewhat.”

“Deak, why don’t you take Torm out to the landspeeder. I need to talk to Wor...I mean Luke, for a minute.”

“Aw, but Dad! He was just telling me about how the Jedi Knights learn to build their own lightsabers!” Torm protested.

Fixer’s eyes went involuntarily to the cylinder hanging innocuously from Luke’s waist, and was suddenly grateful that he and Deak hadn’t come in blasters blazing. As much as he’d given the kid a hard time when they were growing up, he remembered that the grown up version of that kid was a Jedi Knight and Fixer was well aware of what a Jedi was capable of.

“Torm, do as I say. You and your brother are already in trouble for messing around out here when I’ve told you not to,” Fixer said sternly.

Torm’s shoulders drooped and he muttered a ‘yessir’ as he headed towards the door, Deak moving to follow him. He turned at the entrance and looked back towards Luke.

“It was really nice to meet you, Master Skywalker. Maybe I can come and talk to you again sometime?” he asked hopefully.

“If it’s all right with your father,” Luke said.

The boy didn’t look too hopeful about that and he sighed dramatically as he left the room. When they were alone, Fixer glanced at Luke a little nervously, hoping that his apprehension didn’t show as bad as he thought it probably did.

“Kids these days... Sometimes they make you want to pull your hair out,” he said, with a little laugh.

“I wouldn’t know. I don’t have any of my own.”

Not a very optimistic beginning, Fixer thought. “Care to tell me exactly what happened here?” Jedi Master or not, nobody messed with one of his kids.

“I surprised Torm looking through the house. I grabbed him because I’d seen the speederbikes and I wasn’t sure who they belonged to. It only took a few moments for him to recognize me and calm down enough to tell me what was going on. By that time, his brother and the friend were already gone. I realized who he was when he told me his name, so I figured you’d be along soon enough.”

“Ah, I see. I’m, uh, sorry they were messing around in your aunt and uncle’s place. I’ve told ‘em a million times to stay away from here.”

“That’s all right. I do remember how curious I was as a child.”

Luke’s utter calmness was throwing Fixer for a loop. He could never recall little Wormie being so still and quiet for so long. He’d been constantly in motion even up into his teen years.

“So...what are you doing here?” he blurted. “We heard reports that you were dead.”

Luke stiffened and for the first time, emotion flared into his eyes. Fixer wasn’t sure what that emotion was, but it was intense.

“Torm didn’t mention that. I wasn’t sure if it had filtered all the way out here to the rim,” he said gruffly.

“I don’t let my kids mess around on the holonet. Too much stuff they don’t need to see at their ages. He gets most of what he knows about you from those holobooks he reads and stories people around here tell,” Fixer said.

He paused again, wondering if he should pursue the matter, but the truth was, most everyone on Tatooine was a little curious about their famous native son, even the ones who didn’t like to admit it publicly. “Obviously, the reports weren’t true,” he prompted.

“They were truer than you might think,” Luke said, just a tinge of bitterness in his tone.

“I don’t understand,” Fixer said uncertainly.

Luke gave an exasperated sigh and moved to stand in front of the window, turning his back to Fixer. It was the first bit of animation that Fixer had seen since their conversation - if you could call it that - had started.

“I don’t really care to enlighten you.”

Fixer supposed he shouldn’t feel insulted, but he rather did. He was one of Luke’s oldest friends, after all! So he hadn’t been all that friendly most of the time, did that give the high-and-mighty Jedi reason to be rude?

Yes, it does, Fixer. You’re prying. He could almost hear Camie’s voice in his ear. That woman had been nagging at him to improve himself from the moment they’d gotten married. Ah, well. He supposed it wasn’t any of his business.

“So what brings you back to Tatooine, then?” Fixer asked.

He could only wonder at the reasons behind Luke’s suddenly self-mocking little smile.

“I decided I needed a vacation.”

******************************************

Six Standard Months Later

The first rays of bright sunlight were peering through his window when Luke opened his eyes. He’d already hit the extra sleep button on his bedside chrono twice and he knew he’d have to get up this time, or else it would be too hot to work by the time he got to Anchorhead.

Not that he had to go to Anchorhead, but it was easier to keep certain things off his mind if he was preoccupied with work. With a frown, he threw aside the light sheet he slept under and sat up on the edge of his bed. Even that little thought was more than he liked to dwell on anything further back than since he’d arrived on Tatooine.

He finally got up out of the bed and walked to the kitchen to grab a quick bite to eat. If it weren’t for the fact that Fixer was counting on him to be at his shop that afternoon with the vaporator Luke had promised him, he probably wouldn’t even leave the house today.

The scowl on his face deepened as his gaze fell on the bottle of pills that was sitting on the kitchen counter. He’d had to take them again last night, which was probably the reason he’d been too sluggish to wake up the first time his chrono went off this morning.

Luke had not wanted to take the sleeping pills that Dr. Mondahl had given him before he left Coruscant, but as soon as he’d let it slip about the nightmares he was having, Mondahl had insisted. He was determined not to use them unless it was absolutely necessary, though. Using the pills was a sign of weakness, a lack of control, and Luke was determined to never again be out of control.

Unfortunately, last night had been one of those nights where the nightmares just wouldn’t go away. With a grunt, Luke turned away from his latest failure and opened his fridge.

Thirty minutes later, after a quick breakfast and a brief sonic shower, Luke drove the landspeeder - one of the few things he’d bought with his father’s money - towards Fixer’s garage in Anchorhead. People no longer stopped to stare at him as they’d done the first few days he was here. Tatooinians were fiercely independent people for the most part, and usually respected one another’s privacy, especially those that were native to the planet.

After the initial curiosity about the galaxy’s hero - and after realizing that he absolutely was not going to satisfy that curiosity - they left him pretty much alone. He barely got a second glance now as he whipped into a parking space beside Fixer’s garage. He slid out of the driver’s seat and strolled into the slightly cooler space inside the building.

“Luke, ‘bout time you got here. Thought you mighta decided to take a holiday,” Fixer grunted as he momentarily lifted his head out of the bowels of a mostly torn apart speeder.

“Slept in, that’s all,” Luke said quietly. “Where’s Torm and Trent? They can help me unload the vaporator.”

“In the back, arguing no doubt,” Fixer replied as he gestured with the hydrospanner he was holding. “Ungrateful kids. Give ‘em an opportunity to help their old man out and they spend most of their time on that damn dice game,” he grumbled as he dove back into the speeder’s innards.

A ghost of a smile crossed Luke’s face as he thought how much Fixer sounded like Uncle Owen in that moment, before he turned to the back room to fetch the Loneozner boys. They were thrilled to see him, since Luke usually helped their father out while they were in school, especially Torm. The younger boy clung to Luke’s arm, repeating his constant request that Luke levitate him with the Force.

From anyone else, the demand would have annoyed the reluctant Jedi, but Torm reminded him so much of himself. He still turned the boy down every time, but he did it with more patience than he would have anyone else. They gladly helped Luke unload the vaporator he’d brought their father, and then, upon seeing that he wasn’t going to treat them to any special Jedi tricks, eventually melted back into the back room.

Luke and Fixer worked quietly alongside one another for the rest of the morning. Camie brought them lunch around midday and they took a brief break, relaxing in the relative coolness of the garage’s interior when the dual suns reached their peak in the sky.

*******************************

Fixer found himself watching Luke’s hands as they glided over the parts of the vaporator, adjusting, tinkering, sometimes reaching down and exchanging one size hydrospanner for another. Everyone in the galaxy knew, of course, that the right one was mechanical, but it was so hard to tell the difference that sometimes Fixer forgot. He wondered if Luke sometimes forgot, if it would suddenly sneak up on him the fact that one of his limbs was made of circuitry and wires instead of flesh and blood.

“Something on your mind, Fixer?” Luke asked with a quiet sigh, his eyes remaining on his work.

He started just slightly. It still threw him sometimes when Luke did stuff like that. It was difficult reconciling the boy he’d known with the Jedi Master who was sitting across from him now.

“No, sorry. I was, ah, just thinking about stuff,” he said gruffly.

Fixer was embarrassed to have been caught staring in wonder at the ‘savior of the galaxy’. He’d made a conscious effort to treat Luke as normally as he treated his other old friends, and most of the time he succeeded. But every once in a while, it struck him that the guy who assisted him in his little repair shop was the same guy who’d blown up a space station.

Lately, though, one question had started to plague him more and more relentlessly.

“Luke, can I ask you something?” he asked hesitantly.

The Jedi responded with a grunt, and Fixer decided to take that as an assent.

“Not that I don’t appreciate the help and all, but how long were you planning to stay on Tatooine?”

Luke’s movements stilled and for a moment, Fixer thought he might actually get an answer out of him, but then he simply shrugged his shoulders and started working on the vaporator again. Fixer couldn’t just let it go at that.

“It’s just, I remember how hell-bent you always were to get off this rock, is all. And I’m wondering if you’ve suddenly decided to retire here or something.”

Again, Luke paused, still not meeting his friend’s gaze and Fixer pushed on.

“You’re kinda young to be thinking about retirement anyway, aren’t you?” he attempted to joke.

“It’s safe here.”

The words were uttered so quietly that Fixer almost didn’t catch them at first. He frowned at the odd tone in Luke’s voice.

“Safe from what?” he asked automatically.

Any answer to that question was lost as Luke abruptly froze, every line of his posture screaming ‘alert!’. A look of disbelief crossed his face, and he leapt to his feet. To Fixer’s surprise, he turned sharply and began to pace restlessly back and forth in the tiny garage, cursing in both Basic and Huttese. Somewhere mixed in there, Fixer also heard ‘stupid’, ‘careless’, and ‘stubborn’.

He halted in the middle of step and stood utterly still, his head bowed and his hands clenched into fists at his sides. Deliberately, he breathed in, and then exhaled slowly, his fierce expression giving way to the serene mask that Fixer had become accustomed to seeing on his face.

Finally, he sat back down and picked up a hydrospanner and calmly began to work on the vaporator once more.

“Uh, Luke?” Fixer started to question him, but Luke cut him off with a sharp shake of his head.

A noise at the doorway to the garage drew his attention and Fixer glanced up...and immediately felt his breath leave his body. Standing there was quite possibly the most amazing looking woman he’d ever seen. Fixer loved Camie, but he could still appreciate a pretty face, and this was so much more than just a pretty face.

She was not very tall, but she filled out the outfit she was wearing quite nicely. Everything about her spoke of confidence, from her stance of hands-on-hips to the glowering expression on her face. And to top it all off, she had the most incredible flaming red hair that Fixer had ever seen. In fact, it might have been the only red hair that Fixer had ever seen. It wasn’t a very common color on Tatooine.

Somehow he managed to speak with a mouth that had gone very, very dry.

“Can I help you?” he asked while thinking Please say yes!

“I think I’ve found what I’m looking for, thanks,” she said coolly.

“No, you haven’t,” Luke said, and his voice was downright cold. Fixer hadn’t heard that tone from him since the day the Jedi had returned to Tatooine.

“Oh, yes, I have. And if you think you’re going to run away from this conversation, you can think again, Skywalker.”

“I don’t have to run away, because you’re going to turn around and go straight back to Coruscant. We have nothing to discuss.”

Fixer had to consciously keep his jaw from dropping to the floor. He could think of plenty of things he’d like to ‘discuss’ with this incredible vision. He was so entranced staring at her, he almost didn’t notice the glare that was suddenly directed at him from Luke.

“Fixer, I think I hear Camie calling you,” he said gruffly.

“What?” Fixer asked, a little dazed as he finally registered the intense look on Luke’s face.

“Don’t tell me you’re jealous of a little attention from another man, Skywalker? You certainly haven’t cared enough to wonder if anyone else has been looking at me for the last six months,” the redhead’s scathing tone brought both their attention back to her.

Fury flared in Luke’s eyes and he stood abruptly, throwing his tools to the floor. Fixer knew that he was really incensed then. Luke had been raised by Owen Lars to treat his tools with the proper respect, just like any Tatooinian, and for him to forget that...well, this must be one hell of a woman. Besides the obvious fact that she was drop-dead gorgeous.

“I think I’ll be heading back home for the day, Fixer,” he said, his voice tight with tension. His eyes never left the woman as he directed his next words to her. “You need to be gone when I come back tomorrow.”

He stormed past her on his way to the exit and so wasn’t privy to the way her mask of composure slipped briefly, showing pain and longing. Fixer saw it though, and wondered again at how powerful the relationship - whatever it was - between the two of them must have been.

She started to reach for his arm as he passed her and his first name came from her lips in what seemed to be an involuntary plea. “Luke-”

Luke didn’t respond to the entreaty, just yanked his arm out of her grasp and kept moving. He stalked towards his landspeeder, throwing a few last words over his shoulder as he did so.

“You shouldn’t have come, Mara!” With that, he practically flung himself into the landspeeder, and took off in a cloud of dust and sand.

When Fixer’s eyes found the woman again, he wondered whether he’d imagined that momentary break in her poise, because the mask was firmly back in place. He swallowed a bit nervously, trying to figure out what he was supposed to say to her. Frankly, she frightened him a little and that was hard for a man like him to admit, even to himself.

“Are you going to tell me where he’s gone?” she said in a quiet voice that still somehow sounded like a command.

“I...uh...if he’d wanted you to know, I think he woulda told you,” Fixer managed to stammer.

“Let me put it this way. You can tell me or I can drag it out of you forcefully and painfully. Either way, I’m going after him. Your choice on whether you’re able to chew your dinner tonight or not.”

“Who are you?” Fixer said, his tone bordering on awe, because as beautiful as he found her, he was suddenly very grateful that he was married to an uncomplicated woman like Camie.

She gave him a tight smile, and her determination was readable in every line of her stance.

“My name is Mara Jade. I’m Luke’s fiancée.”