Saga The Best Women: Holiday Fic Gift for KELIA

For the third year in the row, I am happy to write a holiday ficlet for KELIA! I hope you enjoy.

KELIA asked for a Saga fic with...
1. A surprise visitor
2. A stolen kiss
3. A romantic serenade

I do not want: anyone dying

Characters: Any Saga characters of your choice, but you’ll earn extra points from me by including Yoda somewhere.

The Best Women

We Lars men fall in love with the best women. –Cliegg Lars

**

Owen sat on a folding chair outside the hovel, watching the suns melt below the horizon.

It had been a hard day. The evaporators on the north face had overheated. After several hours he had narrowed the problem to a few worn out fasteners that he, of course, had not had extras of on hand. But the city was several hours away by speeder on a day had he had time to plan for the trip, which he had not. Going there would have meant leaving Beru alone with the baby…which was, of course, something he could not do.

So he had spent the rest of the afternoon attempting an improvised solution to the problem with leftover C-rings and his blowtorch. But it had not been until nearly dark when he had brought the evaporator temperature down to barely-acceptable levels.

By the end of the day, Owen was convinced that he had lost more moisture to the heat evaporation than he could hope to reconcile from the other evaporators. It was a ruined day, a lost day, a wasted day—

All because the old magical Jedi was still gone.

“Owen?”

Beru’s voice cut through the useless anger threatening to rise up from his chest to his neck. It was quickly followed by the baby’s indignant wail—a cry that Owen had come to unfortunately recognize as the diaper cry.

“Coming!”

He left his chair out in the growing night.

**

She was finished with the new diaper by the time he made it into Luke’s room. The baby was babbly now, all squirming legs and arms in the bouncy seat they had secured to the doorway. The blue in his eyes smiled back at Owen, Beru’s blue, and for a moment he could almost believe Luke was his own son.

Almost.

She was folding laundry then, all the many jumpers and towels a ten-month-old went through in a week. He felt the tightness in his shoulder blades release a little at the sight. He came up behind her and nuzzled a stolen kiss into her neck.

A husky laugh rose up in her throat. She turned to give him that same smile she’d been carrying ever since she became the baby’s mother.

“I heard you pull your speeder in a few minutes ago,” she said. She shifted to press her sand-colored braids into his chest. “How was your day?”

The frustration returned from wherever he had banished it. He told her the story then, of ruined C-rings and moisture loss and all the other terrible things that had visited him today. She listened with softness in her eyes. Luke trilled at the pauses in the story. Of course she had not known about his day. She had spent the entire day, like every other day before in the past ten months, tending to that little boy like he was the light from the suns to her.

She was an optimist. It annoyed him and yet filled him with a kind of warmth he couldn’t name. Every night he’d unload his struggles to her, all his concerns for the farm that was their lifeline. She knew him so well that he didn’t ever have to explain the fear he had at having to provide for this child—having to raise this Jedi-child on a moisture farmer’s income with a moisture farmer’s intellect. This was his constant companion now in the fields…the tight fear that he wasn’t going to be able to provide for them, and that the father would come back for the boy, and the way that would crush Beru although he had no way to prevent it, and how helpless he felt facing the near future of a walking boy child … he never said it, and yet she just knew. She always knew.

When he was done, she pressed her hand against his cheek and grabbed his heart with her eyes.

“I am glad that I have such a resourceful husband who can fix problems like that,” she whispered. “Our son will be very fortunate to grow up with such a father.”

Just like that, in less than a breath she had put him back together and set him upright on that pedestal again, and he knew who he was. He was Owen Lars again. Things would be better tomorrow.

Buoyed with this new strength, he approached Luke very carefully. His big hands wrapped all the way around the little boy’s torso as he gingerly pulled him up out of the bouncer. Luke kicked free of the seat and squealed before sticking a balled fist into his mouth.

“Little one,” his voice sounded, deep and low. “I don’t have the money to give you Father Klaus gifts for tomorrow.”

He could see two tiny white teeth as Luke’s smile spread wide. A spot of drool was growing on his front bib.

He knew Luke was too little to remember anything of this year’s Life Day. Yet it still bothered him that he had not been able to save enough money from the moisture farm to lavish him in toys and clothes like he imagined Padme Amidala would have done. There was only a blanket that Beru had knit and a decent-sized garu bird to roast. It was all he could provide for them, and though he knew in his heart Beru did not mind, he couldn’t help but wish that tomorrow he could be a successful farmer for just one day.

Beru came up behind them and wrapped an arm around his waist.

“It will be a wonderful first Life Day,” she said. “He has a family that loves him. What else does he need?”

She took the baby from him then and headed toward the kitchen for his nightly milk bottle. Owen sat down in the nursery rocking chair and began to knead his fingers into the pressure points in his temples to ward off a headache. But then came the soft dulcet tones of Beru’s voice singing a romantic serenade off the HoloNet, and he closed his eyes.

They had made it through one more day. For now, that was going to have to be his best Life Day gift.

**

It was only two hours before dawn when Beru heard an eopie grunting outside.

Never before had she ever been so glad that Owen slept like a bantha. She slipped out from underneath his arms and padded barefoot to the surface of their home.

Obi-Wan was there, just as promised, untying a bagful of wrapped gifts off his eopie’s back. He lifted his head and they smiled at each other, a sneaky kind of smile shared by two people with a good secret to keep.

This had been planned for weeks. She had been told he would come the night before Life Day with presents for the little boy, and he had delivered. He hauled them very quietly into the main room, then met Beru outside with a smile.

“Our surprise?” he whispered. She nodded and reached to shake his hand.

“Thank you,” she replied. “I know in his heart Owen is thankful for you, too.”

Obi-Wan pulled himself back up on the eopie and began for his cave, leaving her only a short wave of goodbye.

Beru wrapped herself tightly in her shawl and went to wait, wide awake, in the main room with all of Luke’s gifts.

**

In the morning, Owen woke with a jolt once he realized Beru wasn’t pressed up against him. Bright morning light seeped into the room, and suddenly he realized just how late in the morning it was.

He came running then toward the sound of Luke shrieking joyfully from the floor.

When he pulled into the main room, he didn’t know what to say. Underneath the doorframe evergreen was a small pile of wrapped gifts of all sizes. Luke was tugging hard to free a shiny red bow from one of the boxes.

“What—what is this?” he asked, his lower jaw gaping in shock.

“Presents from the old Jedi,” Beru said with light in her voice. She appeared from behind Luke then, holding a small present. She handed it to him to let him shake it. He just knew then, without even opening it, that it was full of fasteners just like the ones he had needed yesterday.

“Sometimes you must have faith that things will work out, even if you don’t know how,” she whispered, tugging at his beard.

“But…how…?”

She silenced his protests with a long kiss, and suddenly all the fears and insecurities seemed small and drowned in her warmth.

His father had been right. The Lars men did always find the best women.

**

END

Aww... What a beautiful look into Owen and Beru's life when Luke came to them.

“It will be a wonderful first Life Day,” she said. “He has a family that loves him. What else does he need?”
Loved this, but I also loved that Obi-wan came with gifts!

Wonderful story, Luna!