Chapter Text
His head was still throbbing. Peregrine crept up to lay some of her substance against the back of his neck and withdrew from his back, staying ahead of Ben’s hand as the hermit helped Luke sit up and gave him water.
It had the slightly rusty-metallic taste that meant its vaporator had one of those cheap KJ4-model condensers, which went out of true just a couple years after installation. Still potable, but that taste made it harder to sell.
Luke hated, really hated, that he’d ended up picking up the moisture farmer’s habit of being able to tell things like that. His family had been so pleased when they found out... Peregrine formed a tendril and nudged him with it, reminding him what he’d been saying before his dry throat made him cough. She might have spoken instead - they knew Ben - but the blow to Luke’s head had her a little out of sorts, too.
He lowered the canteen and capped it a little clumsily. “Artoo-Deetoo here claims he’s the property of an Obi-Wan Kenobi.” The droid beeped cheerfully. It sounded like an affirmative.
“Is that a... relative of yours?” Peregrine ventured.
“Obi-Wan Kenobi,” Ben repeated slowly, stroking his beard. Out beyond him, closer to Artoo, his large bird dæmon raised her head. “Now there’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time.”
“Well, I think my uncle knew ‘im. Uncle Owen said Obi-Wan was dead.”
“Oh, he’s not dead!” An oddly boyish light had come to the eyes of man and dæmon both. “At least not yet.”
“You know him?”
Abruptly Ben grinned. “Well of course I know him!”
“He’s me!” For a baffling moment, Luke thought Ben had spoken without moving his mouth, but as Peregrine sputtered “Wha-” the hermit exchanged a glance with his dæmon, and it became clear.
Ben’s dæmon was actually male. He didn’t sound exactly like Ben, but their voices were so close, Luke wasn’t sure he’d be able to tell without looking. Maybe he’d heard the dæmon speak before but hadn’t seen, and he’d assumed he was hearing Ben talking.
Instead, Ben was a matcher.
Luke knew the term, and that some near-human species had more of them than humans did. They were very, very rare among humans, though the text that had mentioned them had also said that they’d been a little more common during the Old Republic era.
“I haven’t gone by the name of Obi-Wan Kenobi for years.” Ben said it. Ben, not his dæmon. Peregrine couldn’t watch one while Luke looked at the other, so Luke looked back and forth, gradually registering their shared amusement.
He also glanced back at Artoo, who seemed completely unperturbed, as far as it was possible to tell. Well he probably would be, if he belonged to the man.
“Wait. Okay, you.” Peregrine formed a dull point with which to indicate Ben’s dæmon. “You have a collective name or something, right? So what’s yours?”
“I told you,” the other dæmon said mildly. Ben finished. “I am Obi-Wan Kenobi.” He took pity on them. ”We both are. It is a collective name, but it doesn’t apply to two such distinct individuals that I really need more names.”
The way he said it was so warm and sure and completely unquestioning. They didn’t have a knowing about it, but Peregrine was instantly sure that what they’d always suspected was true: Ben was not from Tatooine.
“Then this little droid does belong to you,” Luke said slowly, still trying to wrap his mind around it. Artoo made a friendly-sounding series of beeps.
Ben’s dæmon stepped over and spread a wing over the droid’s dome. The feathers on the underside of his wing were startlingly pale, almost white. “I don’t seem to remember ever owning a droid.” He looked at Luke, and folded the wing again. “Now, I think we’d better get indoors. The Sand People are easily startled, but they’ll soon be back and in greater numbers.”