In Which Vader Discovers He is a Father

Owen Lars

Chapter Four: In which Uncle Owen puts his foot down just a bit too hard.

14 AFE

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They had had another fight. Another fight where Luke asked for permission to leave, and Owen shot his hopes and dreams down.

He was never going to let Luke go. Never let him off this dust covered rock.

Owen had sent Luke to his room, to cool off after he had started to yell, and that had been a mistake. Because Luke now had a plan, a plan to get away from this place even if his uncle didn't approve.

He had, while he was at the height of his anger, grabbed a hold of a rucksack and started to fill it with clothes. He grabbed his datapad as well, and... that was really it. If he was finally going to go to the academy, then he wouldn't need his model ships, he'd have the real thing.

Now that he had calmed down a bit, Luke felt unsure. Could he do this? Run off in the dead of the night, and leave his family behind?

He wrote a note (addressed only to his aunt not to his uncle) apologizing for everything, trying his best to explain.

He worried over his decision for hours, before finally, finally, he hefted the bag on his back, and set off to find adventure at last.

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Being an Imperial recruiter on Tatooine was not a cushy gig, mainly because it involved living and working on Tatooine.

At least the job didn't require Stormtrooper armor. From how the troopers complained, it was clear that their armor was unsuited for this planet's conditions.

Another positive was it meant you had great numbers to report back to your superiors, as just about every brat on this nothing pile of dust was desperate for a way out.

In his short time working in the office, the recruiter had seen all sorts of kids come in and beg for a new life. A life dedicated to protecting stability and order for the glory of the Empire. None of those kids had been quite as pathetic as the boy sitting before him now.

For one thing the kid was tiny and overly skinny. His clothes were loose hanging rags, and all of him was covered in sand - as if he'd walked across the desert just to get here, and had rolled through it along the way just to be sure it got in every possible nook and cranny.

The boy probably should have been sent to Myomer with the rest of the nobodies who'd never amount to much but... He eyed the haphazard rucksack tossed in the corner.

A runaway.

That meant he wouldn't be writing home or looking to return. It meant the depersonalization training Stormtroopers went through would take that much easier.

He was short, shorter than trooper regs allowed, but he was only fourteen, and there was a chance that he still had another growth spurt or two in him.

He stamped the paperwork, then shook the boy's hand.

Sure the kid had come in babbling some nonsense about wanting to be a pilot, but he was just a tiny little sand rat, like hell he'd ever fly a TIE. But they could always use weak willed children to churn into troopers.

"Welcome to the Service, kid. We're glad to have you to help defend the Empire."

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There are many paths, many courses Luke's life could have taken. In one his arrival at the academy was delayed by just a few months. In that timeline everything was different, radically dramatically different, thanks to a fellow student called Dev Morgan. Had they crossed paths it would have been the start of a lifelong friendship. He would have introduced Luke to the Rebellion, and to the Force. Together they would have had a relationship spoken of in legend, impossible feats made real. Yet they did not cross paths. This is not that tale. Not it at all.