DISCLAIMER: Star Wars and all publicly recognisable characters, names and references, etc are the sole property of George Lucas, Lucasfilm Ltd, Lucasarts Inc and 20th Century Fox. This fan fiction was created solely for entertainment and no money was made from it. Also, no copyright or trademark infringement was intended. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author. Any other characters, the storyline and the actual story are the property of the author.
Shmi Skywalker had always known herself to be very, very strong. It was a curious piece of self-knowledge for a woman whose life's direction had generally been set by others, but it had always been with her. And now her life was being spent in slavery, chattel to a fussy, grubby being who was not a slaveholder by nature but lacked the common decency to free two people whom he'd inadvertently won in a game of chance.
Shmi had known her son would be strong, too. How Annie was to use this strength, she could only wonder, but she had felt it there within him even before his birth, then watched it begin to express itself as he became a strange, bright, resilient boy, more remarkable with each passing season. He had a destiny, she could feel it -- and more, he could feel it, knew he was made for some purpose. Shmi had no sense where it would take him, how it *could* take him away from a junkyard on a desert planet where he was a slave boy, but she believed it anyway. Because of that, she was glad, even relieved, that Annie had not merely accepted but wholeheartedly applied her teachings that kindness and helping must be placed first above all things. She had seen much in her life of what strength could do when it was not subdued to kindness -- and Annie was too strong, in too many ways, for his strength to be meaningless.
And now there was another strong being in her house.
Though at the moment he stood outside it, on the stair that led to the door, staring idly out to the cold distances of the night desert. A fragment of breeze stirred the clothing around him, stirred the greying hair off his shoulders, yet did nothing to dissipate the utter stillness that was his essence.
A Jedi knight. Everyone in the galaxy knew what they were, yet few people in the galaxy had ever seen one, and even fewer had known it. Now she thought, if any of them could be spotted at once, perhaps this would be the one.
Yet when she had first seen him, she had registered only a large farmer, in town for vaporator parts maybe, hesitant, pliable enough of will to follow even a little boy. Like Annie, she had let her attention be drawn to the beautiful girl, only focusing on the big man when he stayed behind as Annie led the others to see his droid. And the big man had only thanked her quietly, offering his traveler's supply of compressed food when he had seen she was going to try to feed them all. Even then, she had only thought he was more intelligent than she'd noticed, perhaps more cultured than she'd noticed.
It wasn't until Annie had challenged him with being a Jedi knight, and he answered with an easy joke about perhaps having murdered a Jedi instead, that she had seen that inside the quiet was violence. The hesitation was watchfulness, the stillness the poise of great strength. But the quiet that was wrapped around him as opaquely as the long farmer's poncho -- what was that? Mere latency, Jedi training waiting until it was needed? --or something finer, something worthwhile?
--Something she could allow to take Annie away to his destiny? Anakin was so young, but chance couldn't have sent a Jedi knight into their lives for nothing. And the Jedi felt it as surely as she, staking his mission on Annie's ability to drive in that podrace tomorrow. Annie had gone to sleep, and now there was only the quiet of the night, and waiting.
It seemed to be something he did well, waiting. The legends told of the Jedi knights in battle, how a single one could quell the disturbance of an entire planet, could end a war, could force a peace or throw his or her power into making a victory for a hopeless underdog. The legends said they were mystics, that they could fly and move mountains without even a single touch, that they could steal a man's will, even make you forget you had ever seen them. The legends called them mindreaders, wizards, sorcerors, and terrors.
This one -- he was big, and now she saw the warrior in him, but even so, all he did was stand there. There was nothing in him that seemed a terror or a conjuror. He was strangely content to wait for whatever Annie might do, all but passive. Unless he was actually handling something, he tucked his big, rough hands away under his poncho. When nothing was actively demanding that he deal with it, he simply wrapped his arms around themselves and stood somewhere. There was always a slight frown of concentration on his brow, but nothing more. He seemed impervious to the worry and doubt that gripped his companions, and equally impervious to the excitement that fueled Annie. Why?
Sunset and early night were Tatooine's best hours, when the heat reduced to simply warmth, and the change in temperature stirred the air to small, pleasant breezes. Such a one was playing with the man's hair yet again, shifting the part of it that hung loose around his jaw to tangle in his beard, even lifting over his head, where it flicked mockingly over the part that was pulled back so tightly along his scalp.
Shmi slipped past behind him soundlessly, going down the stairs into the sandy street with neither a word nor a backward glance. The breeze tugged at her tightly braided hair without success, but she enjoyed the freshness of the air on her face, the momentary coolness. She faced into it, toward the open desert, and kept walking.
He followed her.
She led him past the end of the humble housing, past the garbage heap where Annie hid the pod racer he'd been building for the past year, past the last manmade thing, past what would ordinarily be the last safe point. Even during the day, the open sands always belonged to the Sand People, the Jawas, the Tusken Raiders, and the deadly krayt dragons. But she had a Jedi knight a few steps behind her, and felt sure she was safe even if the heavens should open and try to fall on her.
Eventually she found a low dune that curved to her liking. She settled into the sand, its upper layer night-cold already, but underneath still radiating the heat it absorbed from Tatooine's suns. She stretched out her legs against it, hands on the ground by her sides, ankles together, knees gently bent, decorous, complete, composed.
The Jedi settled into the sand next to her, folding himself down in a kneeling position as if he would meditate, but his eyes fixed themselves on her, studying, judging, perhaps even memorizing. She could see in his eyes that he was thinking hard, and yet that he was also listening for something, whether from the millions of visible stars or from deep inside himself, she did not know.
The Jedi were supposed to hear or feel the Force directly, sometimes even to be led by it. Shmi Skywalker didn't care. What had led this Jedi to this place on this night was her will. What she wanted, a small, aging woman on a fringe and desolate planet. An owned thing. A power.
And then his hands were on her.
Even seeing how tall he stood, how broad his shoulders were under the poncho, how small her drinking cups had been in his grip at dinner, didn't quite prepare her for the sheer size of his hands. He touched her shoulders first, grasping them as if he was going to lift her or push her or shake her in anger, but he did none of these things. He let his hands sit there motionlessly for a long moment, each palm easily encompassing the entire round of a shoulder. There was a sensation of heft to his fingers, too, the strength in reserve suggesting that if he closed his hands he might well be able to pull an arm loose from her body. But instead his fingers separated, began sensing her individually, splayed, stroking, traveling down her arms, fingers and thumbs easily meeting around her thin muscles, sliding down to the elbows, rubbing there, coming up under the rough woven cloth to touch the rough skin over the joint and caressing it as if it were itself a garment of cloth of gold or spun silk.