Saga At the End of the Day - Beru, Owen (reformatted/repost) replies & thanks!

Title: At the End of the Day
Author: Divapilot
Genre: introspection
Characters: Beru Whitesun, Owen Lars
Timeframe: Attack of the Clones
Summary: Beru Whitesun comforts Owen as he deals with the pain of losing Shmi a second time.

Written for the Proverbs Challenge. I was given this Chinese proverb: "Sour, sweet, bitter, pungent: all must be tasted."



He leaned against the doorway, wiped his hands absently on a work rag, and stared toward the wide road that headed back toward Mos Eisley. He saw nothing; there was nothing to see. I had been watching him for almost half an hour, busying myself with mindless household tasks, trying to find the courage to speak with him. I desperately wanted to comfort him, but I dreaded taking those steps across the room. The whole world seemed teetering on a horrible edge, and if I moved toward him, I feared it would be just enough to send it careening into the abyss.

Night was beginning to fall. Owen would have to come in at some point, to close and secure the entry points, regardless of whether Anakin returned from the Tusken Raiders or not. We could not risk leaving the homestead exposed overnight in hopes Anakin would return. Still, Owen stayed quiet.

I glanced at the kitchen and realized there was nothing left to do. Reluctantly, I turned around and braced myself to speak with him. I walked over and placed my hand on his shoulder. Owen didn't move. I squeezed his shoulder reassuringly. "He'll come back, Owen. If anyone can get Shmi back, I'm sure it's Anakin," I said quietly.

Owen turned so suddenly that I jolted back. His face tightened, and he spoke through clenched teeth. "Anakin? He?s the only one?" Owen hurled the work rag to the floor and pulled away from me.

I reached for him again. "Owen, wait. I didn't mean to upset you. I was just saying-"

"Saying what? That it's such a good thing the great Jedi Anakin Skywalker has finally come to set things right?" Owen leaned against the wall, and I saw the control in his countenance begin to crack. "All these years he doesn't contact her, he doesn't send word-" Owen laughed bitterly. "Shmi used to tell me stories about how wonderful Anakin was. She called him my brother. Can you believe that? A brother." He nearly spat the word.

He slid down the wall until he sat on the ground. The waning sunslight made complex shadows against his face. I sat quietly beside him. "I'm sure Shmi loved him very much. She must have missed him," I said.

Owen turned to face me for the first time. "Do you remember the story of how Shmi and I met?" he asked.

I nodded. "You and your father came to Watto's shop, and she was working there."

He leaned his head back. "We had moved to Tatooine just about a year before. I missed everything about Ator, the friends and life I had left behind. Most of all, I missed my mother. My father tried his best, but he couldn't replace my mother." He shook his head, as if to reset some memory that had been long dormant. "Anyway, I tripped and hurt my leg on something in the shop. Shmi picked me up and held me. Bandaged me up; stopped the bleeding. I think Dad and I both fell in love with her that day."

I waited for him to continue. He put his hands on his knees and laced his fingers loosely.
"Then Shmi finally came home to us, I thought, 'This is it. I have my family again.' I had someone to be my mother. I hadn't thought I could be happy again, but I was. We all were. And I tried, Beru, I wanted to be such a good son for her. But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't compete with Anakin -- her brilliant real son, taken from her to be a hero to the rest of us."

I leaned against him. "I'm sure Shmi loved - loves - you as much as she loves Anakin."

"Anakin was her son, but I could have been her son, too. I lost my mother; all I wanted was a mother to love me. Anakin had a mother but he wasted it. In all those years he didn't take one time to send her a message, tell her she mattered to him. I needed a mother, but there was always this, this perfect ghost in the way.”

By now the suns had almost set. I glanced anxiously at the main doorway. We would have to lock it down soon, and leave Anakin outside the safety of the home. Owen followed my gaze.”You know, nobody asked him to come here,” he said quietly, bitterly. “We didn’t need him for the last ten years, when he couldn’t be bothered with us. We don’t need him now.”

I stroked his arm. “Maybe it’s meant to be this way. Maybe Anakin can bring Shmi home.”

Owen stared up toward the darkening sky. He swallowed quickly a few times before he found his voice. “Maybe I don’t want her home.”

“What?”

“Dad and I did everything humanly possible to save her. Twenty six people died trying to save her. My dad lost his legs. Now he shows up, the great Jedi, to do what none of us mere mortals could, to reopen all the bloody wounds.”

He turned to me. His eyes were red-rimmed and wet. “Beru, I buried Shmi in my heart two weeks ago when the rescue mission failed. She’s gone. She was my mother to mourn; mine -- not his. Where was he when she was alive? When it mattered?”

Owen rubbed his eyes and I watched as his world slid away and crashed into a hundred brittle pieces. His voice grew quiet and weary. “When Anakin comes back, he’ll have her body. He’ll bury his mother and we’ll have to stand in the background. He’ll mourn and expect us to comfort him. If anyone speaks of Shmi, they’ll remember his heroics -- Anakin, the tragic, motherless son. And then he’ll leave, and we’ll never see him again.”

Evening had turned into early night, and the world had shattered, and all we could do was hold each other and sift through the debris. I leaned my head on his shoulders and together we stared out the doorway toward the road. Presently, in the distance, a vehicle appeared and grew larger as it approached. Behind it, a cloud of dust billowed up, sparkled in the last of the fading sun, and drifted away.

 

DIVA!!!!!!!!!!!!! *tackle/hug*

Oh, you were always so great at getting me to see Uncle Owen in a new light and here you've done so again! I love that he still takes Luke in and loves him, even with Anakin STILL standing in the way, the ghost in his house.

Soooo wonderful to have you posting...

 

What a beautiful and totally different image of that scene! I love it! You really it some amazing emotions with this. Beautiful vignette!

 

Yes, a very different look at Owen's thoughts and feelings.

A nice fic Mary Poppins.

 

This was a lovely vignette. As a Luke fan, I've always had a soft spot for Beru and, to a lesser extent, Owen. I can't imagine how he must have felt, taking in Luke while having such negative feelings about Anakin. Even if Owen and Beru never knew the truth about Vader, they know enough to want to protect Luke from the ways of the Jedi.

Wonderful missing moment.

 

divapilot:

Hello!

Beautiful, heart-tugging! A fantastic insightful and true bit of characterization, full of intense emotion and grief.

When I write introspection, I always strive for a bit of your genius with lyrical poignancy.

Biggest!

Huggles!

~Jade_eyes

 

Excellent work! Great characterisations and use of proverb.

 

Really, so very good, interesting, emotionally complex in such a real way. Absolutely beautiful writing here. I hope to see more

 

Brilliant, Sister-pilot!!!! I've never cared much for Owen, but dang girl-you made me see him in a whole new light. Excellent characterizations.

Bravo, bravo!

 

Nice vignette. I don't know if I ever considered how Owen would feel about Anakin's return, so I quite enjoyed this little look into his thoughts

 

Ginchy Hey lady! Glad you liked this. I?ve played with the idea of an Owen fic for a while, and this seemed to click. I can?t imagine how it must have felt to have loved someone as a mother for all those years, and out of the blue her biological son shows up to take all the attention. I think Owen must have resented Anakin for that.

Luna_Nightshade Thank you so much for your generous praise! There?s an interesting balance between the Force sensitives like Anakin and the ordinary people like Owen that has always intrigued me. How could Owen compete with a god-like step brother?

Lady_Misty Thank you! I?m glad you liked. Owen and Beru are a bit of unsung heroes to me. So much of who Luke is comes from them.

JediMara77 Thank you! I agree, Owen was always distrustful of the Jedi. Maybe because he saw the way that having Anakin as a Jedi affected Shmi, he didn?t want to repeat the trauma to his own family.

Jade_eyes Hi my friend! Thank you so much! You are far too kind to me. Now I read your stuff for the sweet and tender moments.

MiralukaJedi Thank you! I?m really glad you enjoyed this piece.

CloneUncleOwen I think you would especially like this piece, based on your username! Thanks for stopping in and reading.

Seriendipityaey Thank you so much for your thoughtful reply. I appreciate it! I?m glad you enjoyed this.

Jade_Pilot Girrrrrrrrrrrl!!! I miss you! Thanks for stopping in. I?m happy you liked this! You know, there?s got to be a reason why Owen was so darn grumpy.

slow_dawn Thank you so much for taking the time to read and respond. I agree, there?s so much emphasis on Anakin?s feelings about Shmi?s death, but people tend to forget that Owen had lived with her for ten years, since Anakin left. He must have been heartbroken, too. Thanks so much!

 

Awesome!!! Just, plain aweome! Over the years, i've found Owen an increasingly interesting character - and you bring this out perfectly, offering such an fine insight into his thoughts! This viggie reminds me again of exactly why I started to erad fanfiction! Wonderful job!

 

Scouring the Jedi Archives without the help of Jocasta Nu is a daunting task but I did manage to unearth this wee gem! We get so much focus on Anakin and Cliegg that we don't ever see how the loss of Shmi might have affected Owen and even turned him against his step-brother to some extent. Nice to have it from Beru's perspective. She's and underappreciated character and probably the only person Owen ever opens up to. Wonderful piece.

 

Thank you for bringing this out of the attic! I always thought the negativity toward Owen was a bit uncalled for. He loved Luke otherwise he wouldn't have raised him as his own kid. And raising a boy like that must have been emotionally hard and must have stretched every bit of money they had. They knew his father was a Jedi and they knew what happened to people who harbored Jedi, so taking him in was a terrible risk to their safety. He must have loved Luke very much.

That scene where Anakin is at Shmi's grave while Owen stands in the background never seemed fair to me. A lot was asked of Owen, and a lot was thrust upon him.

 

divapilot Holy... moly! How did you pack so much emotion into so few words? Usually I think it's safer to stay away from established characters, but you have so thoroughly and realistically reset Uncle Owen I don't think I can ever look at him the same way again.

Mind = blown

Thank you so much for sharing this.

 

WOW that's a touching take on Owen and Beru

 

Wow! I am so glad gaara dug this up! It's a fantastic read and I don't think I've ever read Owen's thoughts on Shmi before, but this was wonderful! You can see that Owen raised Luke for Shmi.

 

Thank you guys for your comments and thank you, gaarastar58, for bringing this back to the surface (thread necropsy strikes again!).

@kataja: Thank you! And my apologies for taking FOUR KARKING YEARS to reply. Owen is an interesting character, and I think that it's easy for people to disparage him because he seems to be the bad guy to Luke. But Luke is a kid here, and he doesn't yet have the maturity to understand that parenting is hard and you can't always get what you want when you want it. But if you think about it, Owen really sacrificed a lot for Luke.

@gaarastar58: Thanks again for the compliments! Owen, I think, keeps things close to the vest while Beru is more open. They make a good pair. I think Owen feels things deeply; he's been through a lot with the death of his mother, the relocation to the remote planet of Tatooine, and then the backbreaking life on the farm. Shmi must have been a bright spot in his life, but how could he not feel sibling rivalry, and with a brother who will always be better than he is?

@Kurisan: Thank you! I've written OCs and canon characters, and although lately I've been writing OCs more, it was the canon characters who drew me to writing fiction. Working with the minor characters is fun because you can take the basic information and fill them in the way you would like to see them.

@earlybird-obi-wan: Thank you. I'm really glad that you enjoyed it!

@Briannakin: Thanks! I have to think Owen loved Shmi very much. In my headcanon, Luke's last name is Skywalker because Owen wanted to honor Shmi. It had nothing to do with Anakin.

 

Now, that was depressing.

Young Beru strikes me as idealistic and the type to find something in anything, since she could - well - find something in Owen and this is probably where her idealism will start to fade to a certain extent. After all, someday she has to become the bleak individual she more or less is before she's burned to death.

And Owen's priorities strike me as odd - he either has a pretty strange way of understanding emotional connections and relationships of any kind. He does acknowledge that he is damaged by not having a mother, but he holds on to the one he had for a while in a way that slightly mirrors Anakin, the one he considers unreachable, is slightly jealous of. In the end, he fails to realise the obvious: everything that he loved in Shmi, his girlfriend can provide to him, albeit in a slightly different manner. Every person has their own language of love and he, Owen, is complicated when it come to that, perhaps moreso than the others. Sadly, given where this goes, he won't. He'll just drag Beru in his bleakness.

I guess that this is why they end up the way they did - as two meh folks, even though they're, well, raising an idealist.