This is the next installment in my Anakin survives ROTJ AU. It follows The Guiding Winds and Nature Nurture Heaven and Home.

Luke and Anakin have been moving around a bit, but they keep coming back to Tatooine. Now they're back again, and there's a reason for that.

Also, for everyone who was wondering what mysterious device Anakin was working on in Nature Nurture Heaven and Home, here's your answer.

The Scanner

Luke didn't think his father had actually slept for the last three days at least, though it was sometimes hard to tell with him. He had an uncanny knack for sleeping with his eyes open.

They'd been on Tatooine for nearly five weeks now, but they were still living in the shuttle. Kitster Banai (his uncle, Luke thought, and it was no less astonishing now than it had been when they'd met four weeks ago) had of course offered his family's hospitality, but Anakin could only sleep inside his hyperbaric medical chamber, and they certainly didn't have the resources to construct one in Kitster's home.

So they'd stayed on the ship. Anakin shrugged it off. "I've spent most of my life on ships," he said, and the rest remained unspoken. But Luke thought he understood it all the same. I'm not sure I'd know how to live in a home, his father didn't say.

Luke felt that a bit himself, though he also felt the familiarity of the Banai house, with its stucco walls painted in whitewash and warm ochre and the constant, muted hum of the moisture vaporators. He liked that house, even if it didn't quite feel like home anymore.

(The first time they'd visited, Kitster Banai had opened the door, taken one look at them both, and started swearing. "Ani?" he'd said, half incredulous but never doubting. "Troona, what have they done to you?" It was the first time Luke had really considered his father's injuries, and what they might mean. He still hadn't gotten the courage to ask further.)

But if his father had to stay on the ship, Luke would stay there too. Anakin had grumbled at him and called him an overprotective nuna again, but Luke wasn't fooled. He could feel his father's almost shy pleasure in the Force, and he wondered how long it had been since anyone had offered him that kind of care.

Still, he hadn't spent much time in Anakin's medical chamber. It wasn't that the place was off-limits, exactly. But it was his father's room, just as the cockpit had unofficially become Luke's, and they had both grown up in the desert. They understood the need for a place of one's own, even a tiny space carved out of shared quarters.

Now, though, Luke was starting to worry. He hadn't so much as seen Anakin in nearly a day, though he'd heard his father cursing and grumbling every now and then. The walls of the ship were thin.

(He tried, really he did, he tried so hard not to imagine Darth Vader pacing up and down the corridors of his Star Destroyer and muttering darkly under his breath about the inadequacy of his tools and the general incompetence of shuttle mechanics everywhere, occasionally lapsing into curses in some secret language and then mumbling, "I need tzai," to himself before storming to the galley in a righteous tiff. He really did try not to imagine that. He didn't succeed.)

As if on cue, his father let out a wordless sound that was somewhere between aggravation and triumph, and the door to his medical chamber flew back. "Luke!" he called down the hall, and then blinked, startled and off-kilter, to find Luke standing right there.

Luke laughed, shaking his head in mock disapproval at his father. "All right," he said, "you have to tell me what it is you're working on in there, if it can distract you enough to let me sneak up on you."

Anakin scowled. "You didn't sneak up on me," he grumbled. "I just – "

"Didn't notice I was there," said Luke, grinning.

Anakin threw up his hands in a huff. "I need tzai," he muttered, and stormed off in the direction of the galley.

Luke followed him, eventually, but it took him a few moments to stop laughing uncontrollably.

"So," he said, slipping into a seat at the galley table and watching as his father prepared the tzai. Enough for several cups for the both of them, which meant he wasn't really annoyed at all. "Are you ever going to tell me what this thing is? Maybe I can help you with it."

Anakin turned and eyed him with sharp consideration. It was a look that always made Luke just slightly uncomfortable – "inspecting the troops," he always thought, and he was never sure whether that look was more Imperial enforcer or Jedi general, or whether there was even much of a difference. It wasn't something Luke liked to think about.

"Perhaps you're right," said Anakin at last. "I could use your help in testing it."

"Testing? So you've finished it?"

"Maybe," said Anakin. And he produced a small, oblong metal device, handing it to Luke as though it were only an incidental something he'd found in storage somewhere, and not something he'd been almost feverishly toiling over for weeks now. Then he turned back to the cook unit, pouring them each full mugs of tzai.

Luke turned the device over in his hands. It was a scanner of some kind, fairly simple in design, and it really did look like something that had come off a scrap heap. Luke wondered about that.

Anakin placed a mug of tzai beside Luke on the table, but he didn't sit down himself.

Luke turned and craned his neck to look up at where his father was nearly looming over him. "What does it scan for?" he asked.

Anakin didn't respond right away. His eyes were trained on the wall beyond Luke's head, and he swallowed visibly before he spoke. Even then, he didn't really answer. "If it works, you'll find out," he said, more sharply than he'd apparently intended. He did look at Luke then, offering an apologetic grimace of a smile. "I need you to test it on me."

Luke studied him for a moment. This was something important; he didn't need the Force to sense that. "All right," he said slowly. "Stand still and hold your arms out, then."

Anakin snorted, but complied.

Luke scanned his arms, front and back, and nothing happened. He scanned his father's back, from head to feet, and nothing happened. Anakin shifted, restless and even nervous, and he muttered, "Maybe Kenobi – " but it was clearly not a remark intended for Luke.

He scanned his father's face, and then his neck, and then his chest, and nothing happened.

He scanned his father's stomach, and the scanner buzzed and leapt in his hand, and Luke was so startled he nearly dropped it. Did drop it, actually, but it hovered there in the air beside him, caught in his father's invisible grip.

Anakin let out a low, ragged laugh.

"Of course," he rasped, the laugh becoming a cough that had Luke glancing at his respirator in alarm. But the device was still functioning perfectly.

"Of course," said Anakin, snatching the scanner out of the air and placing it on the table with trembling hands. "He took everything else. But he didn't take that. Of course he didn't take that. Never let me forget – "

"Father," said Luke, his voice soft but insistent. "What does your device scan for? What did it find?"

Finally, Anakin looked at him. Luke had never seen him look so old. He exhaled, and all the strength and fire seemed to leave him. What remained was an anger so ancient that it had turned to quiet despair long ago.

"My transmitter," said Anakin. "It found my transmitter."

And then Luke understood.

It was the first thing he'd ever known about his father, and one of his oldest memories. The children in Anchorhead, laughing and shoving at him, calling him peedunkel and slave scum. "My father was freed," he'd spat, and slammed his fist into the other boy's nose, and Uncle Owen had had to peel him off and then he'd spent three whole days not allowed to tinker with anything in the garage for his punishment. "No matter what anyone says," Aunt Beru had whispered, kissing his forehead, "you must always remember who you are, Luke. Violence won't help you there."

Now, Luke thought of that dark throne room hanging in space, his father saying, "I must obey my Master," and the Emperor's laughter, and he knew that Aunt Beru had been right. He still didn't regret punching that boy, though.

"When I left," Anakin said, slowly and so softly that Luke had to strain to hear, "I promised my mother and Kitster and everyone else that I would come back when I was a Jedi, and free all the slaves. I thought – " he laughed again, but it sounded more like a choked gasp " – I thought that was what Jedi did."

Luke had no idea what to say.

"And I was gone for so long," Anakin whispered. "I didn't – I lost myself. A long time ago, I think. Maybe even before – But you saved me, Luke. You brought me back. You brought me home."

Home, Luke thought, reaching down to pick up the scanner once more. It felt strangely light in his hands; something so important should have felt heavier, he thought. What was home to them? Two desert boys who had walked the sky, who had chased the stars, and yet had come back here, to the sand and the blazing twin suns and the chains of their history.

"Maybe it can be," said Luke, the words growing in him and spilling out before he'd intended to speak.

"What?" said Anakin.

"You said that freeing slaves isn't what Jedi do," said Luke. "But maybe it can be. We're the Jedi now. You and me. And Master Yoda told me to pass on what I've learned. This is part of that." He thought of the Emperor, tumbling away down a reactor shaft, and of Leia, trembling with anger but unafraid as she'd told him how she killed Jabba. And his father, standing in the storm and naming himself free. "Maybe even the most important part."

"I'm not a Jedi," said Anakin, but it was a half-hearted protest at best.

"You're still my father," said Luke, unable to hide his smile. "And whatever happened to 'I'll be a Jedi like my son before me'?"

Anakin sighed. "I should have known you would take that too seriously," he grumbled, but Luke could tell there was no real feeling behind it. And now was not the time to argue semantics, anyway.

"So," said Luke. "Where should we start?"

"Kitster has contacts," Anakin said, and now there was a spark of something in his eyes, some old fire kindled from the ashes. "And your sister has made a good start with removing Jabba. The scanner – the scanner will make it possible."

"Then let's go talk to Uncle Kitster," Luke said, grinning.

Anakin studied him closely – not quite "inspecting the troops" this time, but still sharp-eyed and almost cunning. "I thought you intended to restore the Jedi Order?" he asked, and almost succeeded in hiding his momentary flinch.

Luke reached out and squeezed his father's arm. "Who says I can't do both?" he said. "My students will come to me when they're ready. And I know I have Leia. But this…you were right when you said the Jedi should free slaves." He let out a long, slow breath, the conviction hardening in him as he spoke the words. "Maybe the old Jedi couldn't. But I'm – Master Yoda called me the last of the Jedi, but I'm the first, too, and if I'm going to pass on what I've learned, that has to mean everything." He looked up at his father and laughed suddenly. "Besides, I've been fighting slavers long before I'd ever even heard of the Jedi."

Anakin looked momentarily startled, and then almost shy. "Have you?" he murmured. "You'll have to tell me those stories, sometime."

"Sure," Luke said easily. "We'll have all sorts of time to share stories, while you're showing me how to build one of these." And he hefted the scanner, waving it teasingly in front of his father's face.

Anakin snorted. "You can tell me on the way to Mos Eisley," he said drily. "Let's go meet with Kitster."