[AO3 Crosspost] From the first grain of sand

[terresdebrume]

✗ TECHNICAL DETAILS

FANDOM: Star Wars Movies
RATING: Teen & Up
WORDCOUNT:
PAIRING(S): -
CHARACTER(S): Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Chewbacca
GENRE: Storytelling
TRIGGER WARNING(S): Slavery is a theme throughout the series. No story-specific warning.
SUMMARY: Of course Luke is afraid of sandstorms–he’d be a fool otherwise. But, contrary to Han and Chewbacca, he also knows how to appreciate them.
NOTE(S): Many thanks to @soleriane for her betaing work, and to @kavkakat for being a great brainstorming partner. The opening of Luke’ story, particularly “and so it has passed down to us from the first grain of sand in the desert” exists thanks to her!

TEETH OF THE DESERT: [LJ Masterpost] [AO3 Series]


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By the time the Hangar door falls shut, the storm is loud enough that Luke barely hears the difference.

Metal walls creak and scream as sand crashes overheard, and the world sounds like it turned into a giant, badly tuned bell. Even here—even behind the thick stone walls destined to save spaceships should the overarching structure fail—Luke’s belly trembles with the wind, as if the whole of Tatooine resided in his stomach.

Outside, chaos rages, but the world inside has gone uncannily still. The pilots and crews left as soon as the weather report fell—rushed to their brothels and cantinas to wait the storm out. Underground, the house slaves must be gathering, lighting oil lamps and sharing water for luck. Soon, they’ll start telling stories.

Luke, like the other specialized slaves, has to make do with artificial light and wind so loud it drowns out every sound. He closes his eyes and lets the desert fill him with its rage, press into him until his bones buzz with the brutal moves of sand in his veins. The roar fills Luke’s head and chest until the world evaporates into the noise and Hangar Nine is left alone to defy the storm. Maybe this time it’ll break. Maybe Luke will fly away and be devoured by the desert, skin and bones turning to dust like so many other before him.

Eti tsi, pu eti krytra.

I am one, but I am many.

The thought loosens the knot in Luke’s chest, brings the eye of the storm in sharp focus and blurs everything else, the hangar and ships fading to black like a bad holo—until a hand lands on his shoulder and pulls everything back into focus. Luke’s throat burns when he swallows and turns around, craning his neck to look up at Chewbacca. The wookie is the same mountain of fur he was when Luke met him two years ago, and Luke still takes a step back when he sees him, still gather his shoulders around his neck before he can catch the move.

Chewbacca gives a soft growl, words lost on Luke’s unfamiliar ears, and gestures over his shoulders to the Millennium Falcon with a questioning tilt to his head. Luke’s jaw clicks open, makes a valiant effort to hit the ground before Luke catches it. He nods, snaps his teeth together, and doesn’t blink the whole way to the ship.

The Falcon’s body catches against Luke’s fingers, burns and scars etched into the hull like battle wounds. Every ship has its quirks—sore spots and blemishes filled with a thousand tales of adventure and pain, and freedom dearly paid for. The Falcon is no exception, of course, but no other ship feels that warm against Luke’s palms. Sometimes, when he goes to bed, Luke catches the smell of it on the worn fabric of his clothes and hears it breathe against his ears.

Luke has crawled into the most intimate spaces of the Falcon, and walked the hull often enough that he could do it again in his sleep.

But, like most of his peers, he’s never been inside a ship.

He follows Chewbacca onto the boarding ramp, stomach screaming against his ribs as he takes the smallest steps he can manage, silences his feet against the metal, and keeps his hands clasped together in front of him. It’s the same way he stands in front of his master and it burns at his throat, but Luke swallows it without a word.

One day, he’ll stand in a ship again—his own, maybe. Tall and free. Alive and free. That’s what matters.

Sarmartki. Free.

The boarding ramp slides shut as soon as Luke sets foot in the ship proper, and his stomach lurches with abrupt loss of movement. He’s braced on either side by metal walls and, on his right, the control panel to the Falcon’s hydraulic system. In front of him, circular corridors covered in water-stained padding branch out toward the inside of the ship—it smells like the insides of a water skin the day after you left it to dry. Nothing else on Tatooine is wet enough to smell like that—like water gone bad. Even in Luke’s kryku dreams the rot smells different.

Luke inhales the scent like a rare perfume, eyes closed as he hovers at the edge of a different universe, Chewbacca’s looming silhouette nowhere to be seen. For someone so tall and strong, the Wookie can be extremely quiet when he wants to.

Luke steps to the very edge of the boarding area and leans forward for a better view, his heart pounding.

There’s no one here to see or hear him. Nothing but him, empty corridors…and on his right, the lid of a hidden compartment left open, just wide enough for a skinny boy to crawl through.

Luke’s heart beats louder, loud enough to press against his palms and throat, to pull him halfway out of his spot—only for the weight of his tool belt to hold him back. It beats against Luke’s hip as he folds back into his waiting pose, shoulders hunched and eyes to the ground, waiting for someone to tell him what to do.

On his right, the hole in the ground calls him, whispers tales of adventures beyond words and cajoles Luke’s heart so well, makes such a compelling argument, Luke has to wipe a hand against his eyes before he starts wasting water. Sarmaro, the hole promises, but Luke ignores it and looks to the ground for strength.

Freedom, if it comes, will not come from the sky.

Luke waits.

He looks at the wiring next to him—rusted and coming loose in several points—and ignores the way his screwdriver stabs his rib whenever he leans too far to the right. There’s no point listening to that song, either.

“Well, here I thought Chewie was pulling my leg!”

Luke turns to find Han Solo walking up to him in the long, swaggering stride of a pleased man, boots clicking against the floor in a lazy rhythm that may or may not be a common thing on Corellia. The trademark smirk is there too, softened by the absence of gloves and a napkin hanging from Han’s belt.

Luke’s stomach growls.

“What are you even doing here, kid?”

Luke blinks.

“Where else would I go?”

“Wha—uh.” Han casts a look to his left, blinks when he doesn’t find Chewbacca here, and says: “Home, of course? There are slave quarters in the south, right?”

“Oh.” Luke blinks again, hands tightening over one another. “Master Xuwelta doesn’t believe in those.”

Han’s mouth opens and closes, jaw tightening in a strangely Tatooine-like gesture as the man picks at his shirt sleeve. Luke swallows around something thick in his throat and tucks his hands in the wide sleeves of his vest.

“Mechanics are only useful when they’re on hand,” he says, then shrugs.

Those were aunt Beru’s exact words when Luke was sent to live above ground—less than a week before she was sold. That was the day the part of Luke that believed in Xuwelta’s kindness died.

Han’s face constricts into several shades of anger and disgust, hands tightening into fists and easing back with visible effort before he settles for a deliberate sort of nonchalance and says:

“Well there’s no hand to be on tonight, kid. Might as well enjoy the freedom.” He snorts. “You know what I mean.”

Luke does, and he allows himself the thinnest smile before he follows Han through the left corridor.

Three steps in, the smell of synthetic meat catches Luke by surprise, making his stomach growl with eagerness and fatigue both. Han’s fingers twitch.

The main hob is a little small, but then the Falcon was built for cargo, not passengers—and it’s big enough for Luke to stand up in, which is rare enough in his life. Most importantly, the room is also filled with the smell of food, and when Luke enters Chewbacca is just finished setting three rations of insta-bread on a round, checkered table, synthetic meat just waiting for someone to tuck in. Luke barely waits for Han to gesture him forward before he tears into the first portion and practically inhales the bread. The weight softens the emptiness in his stomach, satisfies the part of Luke always begging for more food, but it sloshes and churns around until Luke gags on it, the aftertaste of nutrition cubes filling his mouth as if in revenge.

If Han or Chewbacca notices they don’t talk about it, and for a long while the only sounds in the hob are the click of cutlery and the low drum of the storm crashing against the hangar. Han must have gotten a sound surveillance system installed at some point--there would be no way to hear the storm through the hull otherwise.

Luke keeps his eyes on his plate and listens to the desert breathing for a long while, heart skipping a beat every time a bigger wave hits the hangar, until the table jerks under him, sending water and crumbs of food flying. Luke stares at the water stains glistening next to Chewbacca’s glass, and when he looks up he finds the wookie’s head bent close to the table. Next to him, Han’s back is tense where it leans against the back of his chair, and the foot he propped over his knee taps a quick rhythm in the air.

Luke casts one last glance at the wasted water before he asks:

“Are you alright?”

“Me?” Han bristles, straightening in his chair. “What do you think? It’s not worse than a Corell—”

Another wave of sand crashes against the hangar, shaking the Falcon so hard it makes Luke shiver. Sometimes overambitious pilots crash their ships against one of the hangars and create quite the rattle, too. The luckiest aren’t always the ones that live.

Han’s face turns more somber, and Chewbacca’s fur rises all at once as his fork and knife bend between his fingers. Luke’s legs starts bouncing almost against his will, and he brings his knees up to his chest—hugs them close and tight until his heartbeat eases down.

Just breathe in deep, silly. It helps.

“What about you?” Han asks after a pregnant pause, “Are you afraid?”

“You’re a fool if you’re not,” Luke says, hiding his mouth behind his knees. “They can still kill you even if they’re not here for you.”

Chewbacca growls.

“He’s right,” Han says with a nod to his friend, “Storms aren’t here for anyone in particular.”

Han’s shoulders unclench with the dig—just a bit—and the tightness around his mouth eases into a quick satisfied grin, like he’s won some sort of contest.

“It’s not the storm,” Luke says, neck growing hot, “It’s the krayt.”

“Krayt dragons? What do they have to do with anything?”

Luke pauses to take a good look at Han.

Han stand straight and proud no matter who he talks to. He comes and goes and thinks the desert is a tragedy—and when he talks his hands are always up in the air, light and alive. Unweighed. Unchained. At the same time though, Han has been wearing the same two shirts for as long as Luke has known him. He doesn’t drink with Masters, and no Slave ever came out of—or left in—the Falcon. Han, like Luke—like so many others on Tatooine—lives with his heart turned to the sky and that, more than anything else, decides Luke. Chains, after all, come in a thousand of shapes and weights, but it’s the wearing that matters most.

“I heard this story from my aunt Beru,” Luke says, voice softening around the ancestral words. “She heard it from my grandmother Shmi, who heard it from her ancestors, who heard it from Luakka themself—and so it has passed down to us, from the first grain of sand in the desert.”

Han has gone very still, his face neutral, his upper body leaned back against the back of his chair. His eyes, though, look straight at Luke’s face, and Luke uncurls from his previous pose to cross his ankles together, hands resting over them as he casts his eyes on the water stains and continues:

“Before there was anything, there was Sarlacc. It hung in space, feeding off stars and drinking water from the comets that passed it by. In its stomach, there was water, and in the water, there was Krykutte, the island of plenty. One day, a seed flew from the island and rode on the winds, higher and higher until it found itself in the mouth of Sarlacc. There, it tried to create life—”

“'Tried’ being the operative word?” Han chuckles, but there’s no bite to it, and Luke only blinks before he says:

“Of course it couldn’t create anything green. Sarlacc drank all the water, remember? But the seed persevered. It stole water from Sarlacc. Only a little—just enough to create other seeds before it dried and turned to stone. Those seeds made other like them, over and over again, until the desert was born and called itself Tatooine, the world that endures.”

“I still don’t see what Krayt dragons have to do with the storms.”

Chewbacca swats hand on the shoulder and gets bread crumbs to the face for his trouble. On the table, the water drops shiver.

“Right,” Han mutters once he remembers Luke’s here, “Desert in a sarlac’s mouth. Keep going.”

“The desert kept trying to create life,” Luke says, swallowing a peeved huff, “and eventually it made the Tusken and the Jawas, the banthas and the womp rats and the black melons. But Sarlacc was still thirsty and hungry. It reached inside the desert and ate its children one by one—but the desert never forgets. It remembered what it was and where it came from. It remembered what it was meant to do. So the desert decided to grow teeth.”

If anyone else were around—anyone else who belongs to the sands of Tatooine—they could have joined Luke to speak the words of the desert with him. But Luke is the only slave here, and Han doesn’t know the words—and the idea of being the desert alone fills Luke’s chest with unforgiving coldness. Maybe one day, Han and Chewbacca will hear the story as it should be told.

“The desert gathered the hardest grains of sand for days and days on end,” Luke says instead, “and it filed them to points harder than stone and sharper than knives. It shaped the sand into a creature with more teeth than anything else in the desert, and called it—”

“A krayt dragon.”

Han’s face turns to an exaggerated kind of shocked betrayal when Chewbacca growls, and Luke smile.

“Just krayt, actually. Krayt just means dragon.”

Han and Chewbacca snort with remarkable unity, and Han says:

“I never knew this.”

“We…we don’t teach it much,” Luke admits.

Han pauses again. From the corner of his eyes, Luke sees the man’s gaze turn more speculative. Chewbacca’s right hand lifts to his throat. It tightens something in Luke’s stomach, and he looks back to the water spilled on the table, where two drops are about join into one.

“I guess it’d ruin the joke if the wrong people learned about it,” Han says after too long a pause, “Wouldn’t it?”

There’s a glint in Han’s eyes Luke has seen hundreds of times during his years as a slave—a knowing glance, a smirk tucked at the corner of a mouth. In front of him, Chewbacca’s smile has gone sadder—but the cherished kind. The kind of sadness you don’t want to forget or leave behind.

Where most pilots hand their tools to empty air and conjure food and drinks with a click of their fingers, Han and Chewbacca smile and bow and say ‘will you’ and 'could you’ and 'thanks’. The hangars are never empty to them as they are for others, and maybe that’s the reason why they know better than to share every word they hear.

“Hey, kid,” Han says after a while, clearing his throat with a short cough, “You were getting to the point, I think? About krayt dra—about krayts and sandstorms?”

“I was,” Luke agrees, blinking the world into focus. “The first krayt was Raamaro, and she was followed by many others. Together, they did what they were made to do and protected the children of the desert from Sarlacc’s tentacles. Sometimes, pieces of it fell into the desert and took life there, too. But for the most part the children of Tatooine were free and happy and safe.”

Luke glances at the water on the table again, then down at his hands—the pressure of his knuckles growing white as familiar as the lyrics of a nursery rhyme you never quite think about but can recall without trouble at any time.

“One day the Masters came,” Luke says, “and with them was Luakka, the very first slave of Tatooine. Luakka had been with the Masters for so long they couldn’t even remember anything before that. There was only the Masters and their biddings, and that was all. At first, Luakka walked the sands of Tatooine bent and afraid and hiding from the krayt. But the Masters didn’t care for Luakka’s fear and they sent them farther in the desert every time. Every day, Luakka feared to die, and every day they came back more exhausted than before—but every day, the masters sent them out again.”

This time when Luke looks up, the eagerness he catches on Han and Chewbacca’s faces eases something in his chest that feels almost like his kryku dreams. Luke smiles.

“On one occasion, the Masters sent Luakka particularly far, and they came face to face with Raamaro. Raamaro didn’t know, then, about Slaves and Masters. She knew Luakka was no child of Tatooine, and that was all. She drew on the breath of the desert hidden in her chest and breathed a storm so strong it lasted for seven nights and seven days without respite. Luakka hid in a cave and waited for the storm to pass. They drank, and ate, and slept, and when the storm fell they felt more rested than they ever had before. They came out of the cave and Looked Raamaro in the eyes, and they told her 'You gave me seven nights of rest and seven days of freedom. There is nothing I can thank you with that you wouldn’t have taken, but the price is worth paying.’ Then Luakka took out the last of their water and gave it to the desert.”

Luke sighs, but doesn’t close his eyes. In his mind, he and Luakka always have the same hair, but sometimes the sight is too bright to bear.

“Some stories says a tree grew on the spot and still blooms in the desert today, but that’s not important—”

“Wait,” Han chokes at the words, features shifting into a disbelieving mask, “You’re telling me there might be a tree somewhere on this Gods-forsaken planet, but it’s somehow unimportant?”

“I am,” Luke says, dipping his fingers in the water still lying on the table. “Water freely given has more power than water taken, but the important part isn’t what Luakka gave. It’s that they gave it.”

“The water?”

“Yes,” Luke says, “kryku. But water is life—they’re one and the same, you see? And Luakka gave all of theirs. They set out to join the Masters again, because they knew they had to—but before they’d taken ten steps, another storm rose. It surrounded Luakka and covered every inch of them with sand until they were one with the desert and their thirst vanished.”

Luke spreads cool water over his fingers, shades of green dancing at the edge of his mind. Behind his lips, the words of the desert press and push, trying to break out like an unexpected blessing—Etkap tsi, pu etkap krytra. You are one, but you are many—but Han wouldn’t understand them, and the desert is always meant to be a collective part anyway, so he says:

“Luakka didn’t turn back. They walked back to the Masters, as all slaves must, and after three days and three nights they came back where they started. But from that day on, Luakka became a child of Tatooine, and all the Slaves after them were children of the desert. And from that day on, Raamaro and the krayt sometimes breathed storms over the mosppe to give the slaves some well-deserved rest.”

There’s a long stretch of silence between the three of them. The wind outside has almost settled and Luke’s stomach tightens in anticipation. In an hour—maybe two—ships will start landing again and they’ll need repair, as they always do.

After a while—when the silence has grown too tight to bear—Han takes a deep breath in, sighs, and says:

“Sounds like a steep price to pay for a night of sleep, doesn’t it?”

“For freedom,” Luke corrects, and Han’s lips pull into a brief grimace. “Besides, it’s a price worth paying.”

“Is it?”

Luke takes a look around the hob—at the stained walls and the frayed electronics, the dated technology and sparse lodgings in dire need of repairs. It’s no Master’s lodge, it’s true, and even by Tatooine standards it’s a humble ship…it flies though. It’s taken Han and Chewbacca to the other side of the galaxy and back more times than Luke can count and no chains, no master ever stopped them. When they want to sleep, they sleep. When they want to eat, they eat—kick back and relax whenever they need to.

Maybe they never stop running, but at least they can run.

“Yes,” Luke says, “It is.”

This time, the silence that falls over the hob is complete—not even a single grain of sand drops to the ground. Luke rises to his feet, hips popping back into place loud enough to draw Han’s attention. Han’s gaze burns a wild trace against Luke’s neck even as he hands his plate to Chewbacca.

“You gotta be careful with that kind of thinking, Luke,” Han says before Luke turns around—behind him, Chewbacca growls his approval with a firm nod. “It’s not safe.”

Luke nods, but stays quiet. Tatooine was never meant to be a safe world, anyway, and anyone who comes here—by choice or not—knows this just as well as Luke does. Han and Chewbacca are no exception.

What they don’t know is that the slave word for rain, tamktoao, means tears of the Masters and that it will come when the krayt crush the Masters beneath their teeth. They don’t know the word for freedom, sarmaro, means death too and few slaves ever get to chose between one or the other.

Most importantly, neither of them made any move to retrieve the water they spilled.