Saga - PT "Madonna Under the Suns" (Obi-Wan Kenobi/Beru Lars, one shot, complete, ~4k)

Hi again, guys :B It's been like a solid decade since I've posted work here (or written in this fandom, to be honest), so please let me know if I've messed anything up and I'll be quick to fix it!

Title: Madonna Under the Suns
Author: Vongchild
Timeframe: The year following Revenge of the Sith, with flashbacks to earlier.
Characters: Beru Whitesun Lars, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Owen Lars, Shmi Skywalker, Baby!Luke Skywalker
Genre: Drama, Domestic
Keywords: Hurt/Comfort, Rarepair, Canon-compliant
Summary: The galaxy is in shambles, but Beru Whitesun Lars still has reasons to be happy.
Notes: Also posted on Archive of Our Own!
Word Count: 4233


-----

Beru Whitesun Lars is twenty years old when Obi-Wan Kenobi places her nephew into her arms, and she never imagined herself having children until thirty - at least. She doesn’t think there’s a maternal bone in her body, but she is determined to fake it for this tiny, helpless creature that has been placed in her care.

“He’s not even a blood relative,” grumbles Owen, when Luke screams through the first night. “In the olden days, they would leave him out for the Tusken Raiders to take.”

Beru rolls her eyes at him and tucks the baby up against her shoulder. There is no instinct that tells her how to boil formula or change a diaper. Beru makes herself a cup of instant caf and sits down in front of the holonet terminal, blinks in its sickly holographic glow. Their connection here on the farm lags like a bantha in quicksand, and she slowly searches for instructions for… everything. How to wrap Luke in a swaddle. How to burp him. How to put him down so that he doesn’t stop breathing in the middle of the night.

She rocks him in her arms, sings him something soft and sweet and wordless that she makes up on the spot, and finally the baby drifts off to sleep. Beru stares down at him. He is making faces, as she has read that newborns sometimes do - muscles practicing, neurons making new connections. Every now and then, his eyes snap open, blue as a Tatooine sky, and she is certain he can see her - and then he frowns, downy brow furrowing, and the moment passes.

What, she thinks, does she know about Anakin Skywalker?

She knows that he went with the Jedi when he was nine years old and only came home once after, and that was to bury his mother. Beru and Owen put Cliegg in the ground beside his second wife before Boonta’s Eve the same year - he never really recovered from the raider attack. Anakin didn’t make an effort to stay in contact, but maybe that’s just the Jedi way. She can’t hold it against him.

She ghosts a finger over Luke’s hair.

He’s lost everyone, says Obi-Wan Kenobi, about the baby in his arms. You’re the only family he has left.

She can’t hold much of anything against a dead man.

---

Beru starts dating Owen Lars when she is sixteen. He picks her up in his junky speeder and they do the things she’s done with every other boy she’s ever dated, like go to one of the three restaurants in Anchorhead, or to see his friends’ crappy band practice at Tosche Station, or to watch bootleg holovids that someone’s cousin on Coruscant gets them. Her future is a foregone conclusion. She doesn’t think about it yet.

Adolescence on Tatooine is a curious thing, a wild thing. You hold on to it for as long as you can, because one day, whether you plan for it or not, the desert is going to catch up to you. You’ll be married and boring and running a moisture farm or a repair shop or a hydroponics grove like your mother and father before you, and the longer you put off accepting that, the longer you stay young.

When they have been dating for four months, Owen takes Beru home to see his family’s farm and meet his parents - and standing in the dusty courtyard of the Lars’ moisture farm, Beru realizes with a sudden shock that oh, this is serious.

“Come on,” says Owen, his arm around her shoulder. “I’ve buttered them up. All you have to do is be yourself. They’ll love you.”

Beru thinks about whether this is what she wants. Owen is going to take over the moisture farm someday, and that’s not a glamorous life. She could try holding out for something better, somewhere she won’t have to work every day just to stay sunburnt and dusty. She likes Owen, but is it worth it? For that?

She takes a deep breath.

She lets it go.

She lets everything go.

“Okay,” she says, following Owen into the house.

She doesn’t remember much about her first impressions of Cliegg Lars. He is welcoming, but hospitality is a virtue in the salt flats. She gets the feeling from him that Owen doesn’t bring many girls home, and that his parents feel as much pressure to impress her as she feels to impress them.

What she does remember clearly is Shmi Skywalker Lars standing in the kitchen doorway, drying her broad hands on a dish towel, her eyes framed by deep smile lines - Beru can’t help but smile back.

She remembers that dinner is delicious, and that afterwards she helps Shmi with the dishes and tries to emulate her graceful way of moving. It is then that she first hears the name Anakin Skywalker. He is a footnote in his mother’s story, a little boy who was hers for nine years and then went with the Jedi and… her world didn’t end. Her life wasn’t over. She met Cliegg and moved to the farm and helped raise Owen and she has a whole life now that she made for herself, that is defined by net gain and not by loss.

Beru decides that she wants to be part of that life.

---

If Beru knows very little about Anakin Skywalker, she knows next to nothing about Luke’s mother. It does not take her long to figure out who - the one time Anakin visited, he brought a young woman with him, a pretty girl a few years Beru’s senior with soft hands and cheeks that whispered the arcane secrets of moisturizer and exfoliation. A girl who set out plates and cutlery just so, who spoke the language of formal dinners and polished manners and, probably, finishing school. A girl different from any that grew in the desert.

A girl whose gravity could hold Jedi knights in her orbit.

Her name was Padmé, she remembers, and they’d talked about her homeworld - Naboo. And even though they were trying not to show it, it was clear she and Anakin were in love.

Beru gets comfortable. She expects this to take hours, and that’s if she finds her at all.

Instead, she gets her answer in the first result she returns. HoloNet News broke the story two weeks ago - Padmé Amidala, 27, senator from Naboo, died of complications from childbirth in the early hours of the morning, shocking colleagues who did not even know she was pregnant.

The obituary includes a photograph of the Senator in happier times, looking radiant in a dress cut from bright blue brocade and collared with feathers. Beru’s heart lurches - it’s unmistakably the same woman - and she scrolls to the bottom of the article. According to a representative from Queen Apailana’s office, the royal house of Naboo will handle funeral arrangements for Senator Amidala and her stillborn child. More information is forthcoming, though cultural experts suggest that the funeral procession and burial will take place in Theed within the next two weeks.

Beru frowns and looks at the very-much-alive infant in the bassinet beside her - and her mind begins to race.

---

As far as hermitages go, Tatooine is full of likely spots, but last time Beru saw Obi-Wan Kenobi, he was riding an eopie. She doubts he’d go more than a day’s ride from town, and that limits the options significantly. She also doubts that he’s more than a day’s ride from Luke, narrowing the field again. Then it’s just a matter of asking around the market and seeing if any of the outlying farms have changed hands recently...

It’s easy to go off the grid on Tatooine. It’s much, much harder to disappear completely.

Owen’s gone for a few days on a supply run to Mos Espa with one of the neighbors. Beru packs up the landspeeder with emergency supplies, drops Luke off with the Darklighters, and heads out into the desert.

She drives a hundred and thirty-six kliks into the Jundland Wastes, until she reaches Kenobi’s far-flung homestead. The eopie stands in the shade of the house, grazing from a manger full of hay. Beru nods to it as she climbs the front steps. She knocks on the door, and hears someone moving inside. “Obi-Wan,” she calls.

He hauls the door open, takes a moment to register her, then raises his eyebrows. “Beru?” he asks, looking over the top of her head towards the speeder. “Where’s Luke?”

“My neighbor’s watching him. He’ll be fine,” she assures him. “I need to talk to you.”

He steps aside. “Do come in.” She does. The house is sparsely decorated but tidy. It smells, almost overwhelmingly, of cleaning products.

“You didn’t bring Luke to us because we’re his only family,” she says. “You brought him to hide him.”

“Well, of course,” says Obi-Wan. “From the Empire that seeks to kill all Jedi, that killed Anakin and would just as soon kill me and that innocent child if they knew where we were.”

It doesn’t add up. Beru shakes her head. “No, he has other family. On Naboo. Padmé’s family.” She can tell from the look on his face that she isn’t supposed to know that name. “But you let them think he was dead. He would have been safe there, no connection to Anakin at all. But instead you brought him to us. To his father’s homeworld, less than three-hundred kliks from where you picked him up in the first place.”

It doesn’t make sense. Here, he’s Luke Skywalker, Shmi’s grandson, and his father’s no secret to anyone who cares to do the math. But before Obi-Wan brought Luke to her, only three people in the entire galaxy knew he was Anakin’s child, and two of them are dead.

“What happened to Anakin?” asks Beru.

Obi-Wan hesitates. A little too long.

“Anakin’s not dead,” says Beru.

The man across from her swallows dryly. “Not in the literal sense, no.”

It doesn’t feel good to have caught him in a lie. Not about this. “Are you hiding Luke from Anakin?” she asks.

Obi-Wan sighs. “Anakin was…” He searches for the right word for a long time. “Seduced. By the dark side of the Force. I know you didn’t know him well, Beru, but please believe me when I say that he was a good man. Brave. Just. Passionate. He was a brother to me. But that man has been destroyed. All that remains of him has been reshaped into Darth Vader, the emperor’s puppet, a slave to his anger and the dark side’s destructive will.”

He stops. He sighs deeply. He pinches the bridge of his nose and says, “I should have killed him when I had the chance.”

Beru doesn’t know what to say to that. Absolving guilt is not within her field of expertise. “Is my family safe?” she asks, voice firm.

“I can promise you this much,” says Obi-Wan. “Anakin hates this planet. He would sooner forget it exists than ever set foot here again.”

Beru takes that as the closest thing she’s going to get for a yes. “Okay,” she says. “Thank you, Obi-Wan.”

“Ben,” he corrects. “I’m going to go by Ben Kenobi. Less conspicuous.”

She laughs. “Your last name is as offworlder as your first.”

He manages a smile for her. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

---

Beru drives back in the long shadows of the setting suns. She retrieves Luke and takes him home, changes him and feeds him and swaddles him into a neat little bundle. He falls asleep in the crook of her arm, and she knows that she should put him down in the bassinet, that there are chores to be done… but he’ll never be this small again. He’s already bigger than when Obi-Wan dropped him off, and he’s only going to keep growing.

“Shmi would love you,” she says, biting her lip. She thinks the farm might be haunted. Sometimes when she’s alone in the farmhouse, she steps into a room and feels as though someone else has just barely left it.

As though Shmi Skywalker Lars is still walking the halls of the last home she loved.

Beru falls asleep holding the baby.

---

She wakes up when Owen eases Luke out of her arms. “You’re back early,” Beru says, rubbing her eyes. She checks the chronometer on the wall - it’s only been a few hours, and he’s not supposed to be back until tomorrow evening.

“We got everything we needed today,” says Owen, settling Luke into the bassinet. “Figured we’d drive back tonight.”

Beru nods. “Makes sense.”

“Anything interesting happen today?” Owen asks.

She tells him, in broad strokes, about the research she did into Luke’s parentage and her conversation with Obi-Wan.

“Of course Anakin couldn't just be dead,” snorts Owen. “That wouldn't be nearly dramatic enough for him.”

“That’s a lot to assume about someone you’ve met once,” chides Beru, and looks down at Luke. “What do we tell him?” she asks. “When he’s old enough to ask?”

“Not the truth,” says Owen.

“Obviously.”

---

The rains roll in with the turn of the year, scattered showers high in the atmosphere that never reach the ground. They turn the air muggy, push the moisture harvesters into overdrive, and cause a bumper crop of mushrooms to spring up. Beru spends three weeks straight canning and pickling and drying the leftovers, but by Boonta’s Eve, the rains have gone again, clouds burned away like a desert mirage, and the wind picks up.

“Storm coming,” says Owen, Luke against his shoulder.

Beru nods, casts a long look at the far ridge, the dust clouds churning above the mesa, and feels uneasy for a reason she can’t quite name.

“Are the Harvesters all shut down?” she asks.

“Got one left I need to take care of,” says Owen, holding Luke out to her. Beru takes him, holds him close to her chest, and watches her husband climb into the landspeeder. He zips off towards the approaching storm, and she takes Luke indoors and settles into the old antique rocking chair by the window.

The wind is pounding against the pane by the time Owen returns, wrestling the front door shut behind him. Luke fusses at the noise, his attention pulled away from the storybook on Beru’s datapad. She bounces him on her knee as Owen crosses the room, shedding outerwear and sand.

“You get it done?” she asks. Owen nods.

“It’s gonna be a bad one,” he says, reaching for Luke. “Might be a few days.”

Beru retrieves her datapad, frowns at it. “The weather feed cut out,” she says, showing him the screen. “Storm must be blocking the satellite…”

Owen takes Luke over to the window and looks out into the courtyard. “Can’t be a good day in Mos Espa,” he says. “They’ll have called off the pod race for sure. It’d be madness to try to fly in this…”

Beru exhales, finally saying what she’s been trying not to fret over since the weather shifted. “Do you think Kenobi will be alright?”

“Of course,” says Owen, holding Luke up to the transparisteel. “They make Jedi Masters out of tougher stuff than that.”

“It’s a different kind of toughness,” Beru replies, fussing with the datapad. The satellite feed may be down, but they have their own weather sensors around the property - and she doesn’t like those readings. “Winds at 92 kliks on the South Rise…”

Owen shoots her a pointed look over his shoulder, and then closes the shutters. “Stop,” he says, a gentleness in his voice that reminds Beru of his stepmother. She nods and wipes a hand across the datapad’s surface. The storybook reappears - Ten Little Jawas. She’s read it to Luke so many times she knows it by heart. Ten little Jawas went walking across the yellow sand under the blue sky…

Outside, the wind howls, and Beru feels disquiet in her bones.

---

It takes nearly four days for the storm to clear, and a week after that to dig the harvesters out and get them back online. She waits another week for Owen and some other men from the Salt Flats to make a run to Mos Eisley and then, feeling tremendously rebellious, she drops Luke off with the Darklighters’ and takes the speeder out into the hills.

She doesn’t know where this sudden boldness is coming from. She’s never… she’s never wanted an adventure before, but now…

She once played hostess to the queen of a planet. A fugitive Jedi general has entrusted her to raise the child of Emperor Palpatine’s chief enforcer - a man who was once her husband’s step-brother. She fears that same Jedi may currently be stuck in his own, home, sand blocking the door and living off dehydrated rations. If her life is going to take a turn for the ridiculous (or the extraordinary), she’d best embrace it.

Obi-Wan is, fortunately, not sanded in. She finds him in the corral beside the house, shoveling hay while the eopie scratches its flank on the fence. Beru stops, hands on the gate, and he looks up.

“I thought I might see you soon,” he says, putting the shovel aside.

“Did the Force tell you that?” Beru asks.

He shrugs noncommittally.

“I was worried,” she says. “That storm.” It seems silly now - it’s two weeks past.

“I saw worse in the war,” says Obi-Wan, and then back-tracks. “I mean,” he says, “thank you for coming to check on me. I know it’s a long trip.”

“We look out for each other out here,” she says, and tries to think of what to follow it with. She was foolish to come out here, caught up in some delusion of grandeur that she’d save Obi-Wan’s life and then…

She’d gotten that far, but not in any way she wanted to think about now.

Kenobi smiles, corners of his eyes crinkling, and asks, “Would you like a cup of tea?”

---

The inside of the house looks scarcely more lived-in than when she last saw it. Perhaps it’s a little bit more dusty inside - sand is pervasive, after all, even in the most well-kept homes. Beru takes a seat on the couch, wary of seeming too comfortable, too settled, and after a moment, Obi-Wan returns from the kitchenette and hands her a mug.

She takes a sip. Makes a face. It’s bitter.

“This is…” she says, looking down at the cup. “Not the way we make tea here.” But that was obvious from looking at it. She’s willing to give it another try--

Still bitter.

“It’s the Coruscanti style,” says Obi-Wan, in a way that sounds particularly wistful. “A luxury that I’ll soon have to give up. Going native means no more ordering expensive supplies from offworld; it draws too much attention.”

And he’s shared it with her, anyway, thinks Beru, and resolves to drink it all.

Obi-Wan returns from the kitchenette once more, takes a seat across from her, his own mug held delicately in his hands. Beru studies his fingers. His nails are clipped short. The skin on his knuckles is dry and cracked in places. They’ve lost the neat look he had when he first arrived, when he was a man who cared very much about his appearance. She doubts that the Jedi Order allowed for much vanity, but Obi-Wan seemed a man who took part where he could.

Now, his robes are sun-bleached and the grey at his temples is growing in.

“As you can imagine,” he says, and she jerks her eyes back to meet his. “My life has taken a very unexpected turn.”

“Were you from Coruscant? Originally?” Beru asks, and he shakes his head.

“No. I was brought to the Jedi Temple when I was scarcely older than Luke is now,” Obi-Wan says. Beru thinks about her nephew, how he is sweet and clingy and helpless. How a child that age needs consistency, not a rotating staff of minders in a… she debates, for a moment, between thinking of the Jedi Temple as a military compound or a house of worship, and decides it is likely both.

Or was, anyway.

“Anakin went later,” she says.

“A highly unusual turn of events,” confirms Obi-Wan. “Advocated for by my own master, Qui-Gon Jinn, against the wishes of the Jedi Council.”

“Qui-Gon Jinn,” repeats Beru back to him. “I - I know that name. Shmi used to talk about him.”

“He was quite the maverick.”

“She was grateful for that.”

Obi-Wan’s expression turns sad. Nostalgic. Regretful. “Sometimes I think the Council was right about Anakin,” he says. “Qui-Gon was wrong. He shouldn’t have been trained.”

At a loss for words, Beru finishes the last of her tea and gets to her feet. “I should head back,” she says softly. Obi-Wan nods.

“Thank you for coming by,” he says, and she can tell how lonely he is - but he’ll never say.

---

She sells a few jars of pickled mushrooms and places an order for a canister of Coruscanti-style tea. When it arrives on the freighter a few weeks later, she has an excuse to drive out into the desert again.

Obi-Wan opens the door as she pulls up in the speeder, and as she walks towards him, Beru realizes that the look on his face is one of concern - he must think something’s wrong. She holds the canister out in front of her - a peace offering.

“What is this?” he asks, taking it uncertainly. Beru shrugs up at him.

“A gift for a gift,” she says. He looks confused.

He says, “I think you should probably come in.”

Beru follows him into the house and over to the small kitchenette, where Kenobi turns the canister wonderingly over in his hands. “Thank you. Where did you…?”

“Offworld. I ordered it,” she replies. “Less suspicious for me than for you, right? No one expects me to be hiding anything.”

He nods, then narrows his gaze at her. “You shouldn’t do it again. What did you mean - a gift for a gift?”

“You brought me Luke,” Beru answers. “You didn’t have to, but you did. And he’s a gift. I - I thought about what you said. Last time.”

“Oh?” he asks.

She’s practiced this.

“About how Anakin should have never been trained,” Beru continues. “And… from your perspective, I suppose you’re right. What he’s done is… inexcusable. He’s turned your life and the lives of trillions of beings upside-down, helped lead a coup and overthrow the Republic, but… this is Tatooine. We were never in the Republic, so Republic or Empire, it makes no difference to us here. Perhaps it’s selfish, but all I know is that my life is better for Anakin having gone with the Jedi.”

Because he went, and Shmi Skywalker’s life didn’t end when he did.

Obi-Wan sets the canister on the counter, nodding slowly.

“If Anakin never left Tatooine,” Beru continues, hands beginning to shake, “Shmi’s master would have never considered selling her, so Cliegg wouldn’t have ever freed her or married her, and she wouldn’t have been Owen’s stepmother and I wouldn’t have married him and- and all of those things I said about Luke. If Anakin never left--”

She breaks off. She’d practiced. It’s not doing her much good now.

“What I mean is,” says Beru, trying to compose herself. “I know that your problems - that the galaxy’s problems - are so much larger than my happiness. And maybe… maybe the fact that I am happy makes me a terrible person. But…”

People are dead, she thinks. There’s a government in shambles. She doesn’t have any right to be enjoying her life right now.

Beru looks down, feels shame burning hot in the pit of her stomach. “It’s not all bad.”

Obi-Wan’s fingertips, gentle against her jaw, direct her attention back up.

“So you bought me tea?” he asks.

“Yes,” says Beru. “I hope that’s alright.”

His hands are cool, his fingers rough. He leans down to kiss her and Beru worries that she’s sent the wrong message but her heart races and her hands find purchase in the front of his robe and she realizes- she wasn’t actually sure what message she was sending.

He breaks the kiss, his arms settling around her shoulders, and he holds her close with no sign of stopping. He must be touch-starved, Beru realizes, her face pressed against his neck. The Jedi are always in pairs, aren’t they? They know the importance of companionship.

He smells like dust and heat and straw and a hint of something finer, the musk of another life.

He lets go of her. Takes a step back. Looks apologetic. Beru’s breath catches in her throat.

She takes hold of his hand and, carefully, presses it to her collarbone so he can feel her pulse in her throat. With her other hand, she reaches up and cups his jaw. “You can grieve,” she says, choosing her words.“But you’re still alive.”

His fingers flex against her chest, searching for bare skin, and she pushes her tunic from her shoulder. He breathes: “That’s a relief.”

---

When she leaves, he’s sleeping, and she knows she can never go back. At home, Luke is waiting, and Owen doesn’t press her for an explanation.

For the next few weeks, a conflicted sort of guilt pools in her gut.

But in time, even that bleeds away.

 

Oh, lovely, Vongchild! So few people think of Beru. This was so nicely done; her inner thoughts, part of her wanting more, and the pragmatic part realizing that this is what there is and going on with it. Thanks for sharing it!

 

Beautiful look into Beru's perspective and her emotions.

 

Mistress_Renata JediMaster_Jen Thank you so much! This fic started percolating sometime after I saw The Force Awakens a year ago and took me until now to finish up, but I was really struck by how LITTLE we know about Beru, especially when you consider that she's got to be one of the most important influences on Luke! It seems like he should stop and think about her (and his uncle) more often than he does in the canon, doesn't it?

 

My friend Findswoman pointed this story out to me back in December, but the first time I read it, the curse of inability to focus happened - it was 4K+ of jumbled words, with the word "Beru" sticking out here and there. A month later, when I could concentrate and see the actual story, I started leaving a long and detailed reply, solely to experience Chrome's Curse of Auto-Refresh. But I've had this tab open on two different computers, for two months, determined to say something when the time is right.

First of all, it takes QUITE a writer to depict adultery the way you did here - it's not squicky, it's not sickening - it makes sense, from a certain point of view.

It also takes QUITE a writer to write a story using present tense and not make it look like a choose-your-own-adventure type of a thing.

All along, it seems that Beru has never had the privilege of choosing - she did not have much to choose in terms of her life path, her activities, not even her spouse. And then, the series of tragic events reveals her role in the fate of the entire Galaxy. Though it's not implied that this is a small role that will result in her ultimate demise, it seems that she...knows.

And naturally, she finds some comfort in somebody who will be involved in the same event.

Thought-provoking, painful and heartbreaking in so many ways.

 

This was a beautiful read. Your story left a lot of space for the wonderful woman that is called Beru. We learn more about her background, her relations and most of all her feelings. We see her grow into a mother against all odds, being kind and caring. I do like her interaction with Obi-Wan/ Ben as well.

But what I liked most is the following realization: She remembers that dinner is delicious, and that afterwards she helps Shmi with the dishes and tries to emulate her graceful way of moving. It is then that she first hears the name Anakin Skywalker. He is a footnote in his mother’s story, a little boy who was hers for nine years and then went with the Jedi and… her world didn’t end. Her life wasn’t over. She met Cliegg and moved to the farm and helped raise Owen and she has a whole life now that she made for herself, that is defined by net gain and not by loss.

Shmi´s Skywalkers world didn´t end, but it still contained the son that she loved inside her heart. That is an important message. Thank you!

 

Ewok Poet

I only just saw this last night, but thank you so much for taking the time to come back and leave such a thoughtful review!

AzureAngel2
Thank you for such kind words!!!

 

PS - to whomever nominated this fic for awards, thank you from the bottom of my heart! <3