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The protocol droid C-f0 3PO tottered out of the ship, followed by his astromech counterpart, R2-f0 D2. He stood with his hands on his hips, glaring at the bleak desert landscape. They had landed at the edge of the Dune Sea, a sandy, windswept plain that stretched to the horizon. Bleached nearly white by the harsh Tatooine suns, the ocean of sand melded seamlessly into the pale, hazy sky. "This climate is dreadfully bad for my joints!"

R2-f0 D2 beeped gleefully, wheeling circles around his golden friend, as Leia stretched.

"Easy for you to say," C-f0 3PO snapped. "You don't have to worry about your language circuits getting sandclogged. I still don't understand why we couldn't hide in a nice civilized place, like Coruscant or Kuat. As it happens, I actually speak all six dialects of Kuat, including the rare—"

"We're not going to Kuat," Luke said irritably. "And we're not hiding." He brushed a hand through his hair, already dusted with sand. Away from his home planet, he had forgotten the way the sand coated everything, inside and out.

Luke squinted against the brutal twin suns and wiped the sweat off his forehead, smearing his face with sandy grit. Hard to believe he'd spent his whole life here.

And yet, now that he was back, it was just as hard to believe he'd ever left.

"We're here for Biggs."

True, no one in the Rebellion knew where they'd gone. And Leia was adamant that they not return to Yavin 4 until the Rebels had completed their investigation and discovered who wanted Luke dead. But Luke hadn't run away to Tatooine. He'd gotten a message the week before from his old friend Windy.

The old gang was getting together, to mourn the death and celebrate the life of Biggs Darklighter. To remember the good old days.

The days before a TIE fighter blew Biggs out of the sky.

Luke had been there, seen it happen. One moment Biggs was there, the same confident flyboy he'd been back home, covering Luke as they attacked the Death Star.

Then, the next moment, nothing left but a cloud of debris, drifting into space.

Luke had promised Leia he wouldn't tell any of his old friends where he'd been these last few months, which meant he couldn't tell them of Biggs's last moments or his last act of heroism. But Luke was determined to give his old friend the sendoff he deserved.

He just had one stop to make first.

"This is where you lived?" Leia asked, trying to see past the ruined remnants of the moisture farm and imagine what the place must have looked like before it was destroyed. It would have been hard under any circumstances—the Empire had burned most of it, and looting Jawas had taken care of the rest. But it wasn't just that. Leia would never have admitted it, but to her, the whole planet looked like a pile of ruins. Broken buildings, broken people. She couldn't imagine anyone growing up here, much less Luke.

He nodded, pointing at the pile of crumbled pourstone. It was already half-covered by sand and Leia suspected that within a few years, the desert would have reclaimed all remnants of the Lars moisture farm. "My bedroom was over there," Luke said. "Some of the vaporators were spread out, all along there.

They were always breaking down, but it's like Uncle Owen always says, 'You want to be a moisture farmer, you have to—'"

He snapped his mouth shut.

"What?" Leia asked, when he didn't continue.

Luke shook his head.

He didn't have to explain any further. Leia had her own memories, her own ruined past. Sometimes it was hard to remember that the people you'd lost were gone forever. Sometimes it was impossible to forget.

They stood quietly for several long moments, the wind spraying a fine mist of sand in their faces. Even the droids knew better than to speak.

"Do you want to get closer?" Leia finally asked. "See if…there's anything left to salvage?"

Luke hesitated for a moment, scanning the ruins, as if weighing the odds that anything could have survived the Imperial destruction. Then he gave himself a shake, and turned his back on his old home. Leia hurried after him as he headed toward the