Archive of Our Own ^beta

Shmi Skywalker is twelve years old when she collapses in the middle of Gardulla’s gardens and has what appears to be a seizure. Even the guards don’t doubt that it’s a real issue. The screaming, the tremors, all of it.

Gardulla has medical droids for this sort of thing. There’s no point in losing money by letting slaves die when they can be fixed up. People are expensive, and Gardulla gambles too much to waste money on intimidating her slaves with the threat of poor health. She won’t buy anyone a new prosthesis, but they all get their vaccinations and are checked for parasites on the regular. Imagine the waste of the whole cadre being wiped out by a preventable disease.

Seizures are one of those things that depend on the droid, though. If the medicine is cheap, the majordomo will probably allow it so as to keep Shmi working as much as possible. If it’s not, and the cause is something that requires surgery…

They’ll find another, less pleasant position for her than simply tending the gardens and waiting tables.

“There is no discernible cause,” the droid reports, when Shmi is awake and sitting and still trembling, though now it is out of fear rather than an aftershock of the incident. She has been given a glass of water. “The patient is, however, dehydrated and malnourished, and needs better—”

“Ignore that,” the guard that brought her says. “They’re all dehydrated and malnourished. What about the seizures? Is it going to be expensive to fix?”

“The patient will need to be monitored during a seizure to discern the cause,” the droid says.

Shmi does not comment. She does not get a say in this. She is twelve, and she is owned, and she knows what caused this.

She is filled with the echoes of memories.

--

Shmi is distracted and confused and shaky for days after the incident. She does not fall to the ground again, does not drop anything important, does not present with any unusual symptoms when directed to get a check-up with the droid just in case there’s an embolism or something threatening to kill her.

(Gardulla would be so very annoyed if the money she spent on this human girl went to waste with a preventable death, after all. Young girls are not cheap.)

Her actions are rote. She serves drinks and food. She cares for the plants imported from Nal Hutta. She stares at the bunk above her at night.

Her memory is filled with years and years and years of sand. Gardulla’s, and a junk shop, and then a farm. She thinks there is a husband, there, a man that strikes her as very old right now, but she thinks she is also very old, then. There is a son, or perhaps two; a boy she births, and another she does not meet until he is of an age to make his own choices in the world. The memories are hazy, but linear. She can make out the shape of what her life would have been. They feel like her, or like they will be her, or like… something. Like a story she heard and only mostly recalls. She does not remember the names of characters, but she remembers what they did, and how they made her feel.

The strongest, clearest memories she has are of giving birth, of giving her child to a Jedi, and of dying in the hands of her son. All of them are painful.

She also has memories that she knows, intimately, are not her own. These are not linear. They are patchy, like things she glimpsed happen through a doorway as she passed, remembering parts of incidents but not context. She has never been to the great temple of the Jedi, but she can see it in her mind’s eye.

She would call it a dream, except when she puts a rock in her hand and focuses hard, hidden away from all who might see, she can make it float.

That’s so wizard, Obi-Wan!

She doesn’t know much. She has half-names and perspectives that don’t make sense. Sights from an eyeline several heads taller than herself. People from species she’s only heard of, or has no knowledge of at all, like Rancissis and Qui-Gon and Yoda and Windu and Yarael. Sometimes, she sees faces, but that does little to help her.

Shmi feels that she is losing her mind.

The only name that she can recall fully, consistently, confidently…

Is Obi-Wan Kenobi.

There are others that she can almost guess at, ones where she thinks she’s got it in her mind, but she’s just… not sure. She thinks Padmé Amidala is a person, except sometimes she thinks Padmé Naberrie, and sometimes Amidala has a different face, and then she just gets more confused.

(She thinks of Ahsoka Tano, but Ahsoka is also Snips is also Daughter is also Fulcrum is also Ashla.)

(There are a scant few memories from what she thinks might be after her death. Even shorter, more horrible flashes than slavery and death.)

(War, and pain, and a grief she cannot place. Something shiny and black, and a world bathed in red, and… she shies away from that. Something shields her from most of it. From that cold, angry, horrible thing, like a Krayt lurking behind a door half-chained. Too young, she thinks. She is too young, in the eyes of whatever puts itself between her and Vader Vader Vader.)

Obi-Wan Kenobi is also Ben, but he is first and always Obi-Wan Kenobi. Even as Ben, he is Kenobi.

It sits firmly in her chest, like something right, that she should find Obi-Wan Kenobi. Skywalker and Kenobi. The Team. It feels inevitable, it feels correct, it feels like the Universe, this Jedi’s Force, is saying that it’s something that is-was-will be always true. That it is a constant truth.

Shmi tries to meditate. Sometimes, she thinks she needs to focus on her anger, her fear, but those thoughts come with the sensation of being trapped, enslaved again, of drowning in something thick and slimy and cold. Pain, both in her soul and in her body, in every organ and in missing limb and lightning lightning lightning—

It is calmer, to meditate the way she thinks Jedi do. To close her eyes and clear her mind and try to feel the Force. The currents of the universe. An awareness of her own body.

Shmi Skywalker is twelve years old, and she locates her explosive chip without meaning to.

Shmi Skywalker is twelve years old, and she frees herself in the dead of night, stowing away to the galaxy beyond Tatooine.

--

Skywalker and Kenobi, she chants in the depths of her own mind. It’s not a reminder, for she needs no reminding of this fact, but it calms her when nothing else does. It’s an assurance, maybe.

Kenobi. She needs to find Kenobi. She has nothing to lead her but her feelings. Nothing to trade but her scant skills as a mechanic. She was not trained in that, not yet, and she only half-remembers what someone—Anakin, her Anakin, near a decade and a half from existing—had known in years to come. Nothing to trade but little skills and the fathier-eyed look of a pitiful orphan begging for help.

She stows away more often than not. She follows what the Force tells her, instincts she does not know, and it drags her to the Core. She is too good at hiding, she thinks, and that is probably the Force as well.

So long as she listens to it, she is protected.

(She should trust in it, but it feels like a noose around her neck. She has lived too long in fear. What will the Force do should she disobey?)

It rattles her, little by little.

She feels, as often as not, that she does not fit into her own body. She is too small, and her knees do not creak, and her hands are only calloused, not weathered. She dreams of things to come, things she does not understand, and the galaxy spins on without care for her.

Shmi thinks she is coming apart at the seams. Half the time, she can only logic her way through a question with the help of the Force. The other half, she cannot logic at all. She simply… asks it to guide her.

Like she’s a ship, and the Force is her pilot.

It terrifies her. She grips the only thought that can truly stay clear and consistent, as she steals clean clothes and sneaks into bathhouses and nicks food from megastore shelves.

Kenobi.

She needs to find Obi-Wan. He can fix it. He always fixed things for Anakin. Even—

The Force slips between her and the dark, and she is grateful.

Shmi Skywalker is twelve years old, and going mad, when she steals a small freighter.

--

There are very few things that can prepare a person of adult age for being kidnapped by a supernatural child.

Astrid and Ka-Reem are in their early thirties. They are on vacation, a baby-moon, on one of Stewjon’s moons. This day, they have entertained themselves discussing whether their child will be Astrid’s strawberry-blonde, or Ka-Reem’s mid-tone brunette, or something from a generation back. They don’t yet know the gender, even. Five months is enough to know, but they elected not to ask. They will be happy with any result, and love their child all the same.

They are looking forward to being parents.

They are not looking forward to a distressed, raggedy young girl, perhaps ten years old, finding them in the tourist market and grabbing Astrid’s arm. She clings, even as Astrid tries to get away, and seems to be searching for something.

Ka-Reem steps closer to the girl, about to intervene even as he starts to scan for the pickpockets he thinks may dart in with the distraction the girl provides, but—

“Obi-Wan Kenobi,” the girl says, near tears, “do you know him?”

It’s their surname. It’s even one of the names they talked about, for a boy.

It takes a second, but Ka-Reem still steps forward, and firmly pulls the girl’s hand off of his wife. He lets go, and the girl’s hands flex in the air like she’s trying to grab at something.

She knows things she shouldn’t. It could be the stars talking to her, but it could just as easily be that she’s part of a team that’s been eavesdropping on private conversations. Again, pickpockets.

“We might,” Ka-Reem says carefully. “Who are you?

The girl stares at him. She looks to Astrid. She looks at Astrid’s stomach, still mostly hidden beneath a flowy white blouse.

“Oh,” the girl says. She starts tearing up. “Oh, no. No, no, no…”

She grabs at her hair and steps back, shaking her head to one side and the other, breath coming faster.

Ka-Reem does not know what the fuck to do. Astrid, bless her, tries to step closer to the girl. Some people are staring, but others are just ignoring the three of them like it’s just another Taungsday.

Maybe it is, if it’s a criminal ploy.

He cannot stop Astrid from ushering the girl to a quieter spot and trying to calm her down. “Hey, hey, do you have an adult we can take you to? You parents, or a school, or… someplace safe?”

“The police station?” Ka-Reem suggests under his breath, and Astrid shoots him an arch look.

“He was supposed to help,” the girl moans, hands still in her hair. “He was supposed to make it stop but he’s not even a person yet.”

Ka-Reem is starting to think this kid needs a hospital. He still keeps an ear out for accomplices, but a hospital might make more sense.

“You mean my baby?” Astrid prompts. “They’ve not been born, no. I don’t know the gender yet, but it might be an Obi-Wan. Or it could—”

“He will,” the girl says. “Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi. He was—I didn’t think—”

Ka-Reem is still trying to parse the Jedi bit when the girl turns and starts running.

Astrid follows. Ka-Reem would love to not follow, just alert the authorities to a young person in distress having some kind of emergency, because not only is he not equipped to deal with this, but his wife is in a ‘delicate medical state,’ as her ob-gyn puts it. He cannot, however, stop Astrid, so all he can do is follow.

They leave the crowded main streets. They leave the market entirely, and Ka-Reem wants to stop, but Astrid won’t, like something’s possessed her. They get closer and closer to the ship parking, and the girl falls to her knees, grabbing her head again and crying out like a wounded animal.

“It’s okay, honey,” Astrid tries, putting a hand on the girl’s shoulder. It doesn’t help much. Ka-Reem catches up.

The girl raises her head, face covered in tear tracks, and her eyes—they glow.

Her eyes are glowing.

“Sleep.”

--

Ka-Reem wakes up on a faintly rumbling floor. It takes a few moments for his memory to catch up to him, and then he shoves himself up to his elbows and then to his—

He freezes, eyes on the girl huddled with her back to a wall, arms wrapped about her knees, and eyes teary.

Astrid groans somewhere behind him, and he tries to move in front of her.

“I’m sorry,” the girl whispers. “I’m—there’s so much in my head.”

Ka-Reem has no idea what’s going on. “Where are we?”

“A hyperlane,” the girl says. “I don’t know where to. I just punched something in and let the computer do the calculations.”

She punched something in.

“Reem?” Astrid mumbles. “What…”

There are a million questions on his mind. He doesn’t know what to ask at all.

“I’m sorry,” the girl says again. She squeezes her eyes shut, and shoves her face into her arms. She whispers it over and over.

“Is someone making you do this?” Ka-Reem finally asks. “Is there an adult on board that’s…”

He trails off. He does not think there’s an adult on board. She said she set the course herself.

“What did you use to knock us out?” Astrid asks. Her wide fingers cup his shoulder. “Will it hurt the baby?”

The girl shakes her head. “It was the Force. I think. That’s—I just said it. And it went through me. And you fell.”

“And you kidnapped us,” Ka-Reem says. Great. What the hell. “How did you even move us?”

She shrugs. “The Force.”

“Are you a Jedi?” he asks.

She stares at him for a moment, eyes still scrunched and wet. She sniffles, a few more tears leaking.

Ka-Reem has a sinking feeling that whatever’s happened here is much worse, and less malicious, than some pickpockets.

“Something’s wrong with me,” the girl says. “And I thought—I saw Obi-Wan, as an adult. And it’s always Skywalker and Kenobi. And I thought—I thought if I found him, he could make it stop. But he’s not. He’s not even a baby yet.”

She sounds desperate.

“Okay,” Astrid says. “You said that he was going to be a Jedi, right?”

The girl sniffles, and nods.

“So maybe you need to find a Jedi,” Astrid says, “even if it’s not my Obi-Wan.”

The girl hesitates. Nods. “Maybe.”

“We can go to Coruscant,” Astrid cajoles. “With you, even.”

Ka-Reem twitches. “Astrid, I have work. We were only supposed to be on vacation for another week, this could take longer than we have time for. Can’t we get back to Stewjon and just call a Jedi?”

Astrid, to her credit, does seem to consider this. Ka-Reem can see it in her face.

But then her eyes go back to the girl, and Ka-Reem has definitely lost this fight. “No, I don’t think we can.”

Maybe a Jedi can write Ka-Reem a letter to get a pass from his job. If they’d had the option to stop by the hotel before they left, he could have at least grabbed his datapads to do something remote.

--

Astrid’s heart is going to break, really.

The girl’s name is Shmi. She is twelve, not ten, and was a slave until recently. She has memories of the next thirty-five years, up until her death. Some of those memories are from the perspective of a son she will have some sixteen or seventeen years from now. Not many, and not clearly, but Obi-Wan Kenobi features heavily as the boy’s… something? Shmi is unclear on that, but says they were positive and close. Maybe something like brothers, or a father figure.

Shmi has stolen the ship they are currently on. She does not remember how. She does not remember from whom. They will have trouble explaining that to the authorities, but given the state Shmi is in, Ka-Reem and Astrid think they’ll be able to do it. She’s got the Force and she’s unwell. Strange things happen in those circumstances.

Astrid does her best to keep Shmi emotionally stable. She agrees to the requests to sit nearby when Shmi tries to meditate. She even asks if there’s a way she can join in, herself. She hugs the girl, which often leads to tears, and finds some databooks on the ship that are… well, they’re not meant for children, really, but an adult-level zoology encyclopedia isn’t really inappropriate, just a little boring. And for a kid like Shmi, even that’s not true.

Shmi has seen animals, but only the ones that make their way to ‘Gardulla’s Palace,’ a place that Astrid’s never heard of before, and that she doesn’t much like the sound of.

Ka-Reem’s stopped worrying quite so loudly after hearing about Shmi’s childhood. Astrid understands his concerns, but she’s rather…

She doesn’t know if a pregnancy can temporarily lend Force Sensitivity to the carrier. She doesn’t know if maybe, in some odd way, she can feel her baby’s fondness for the idea of Shmi, half a lifetime away. She doesn’t know if maybe she can just feel the Force, telling her to help the girl.

She’d felt it pull, back on the babymoon. It was what had her running after Shmi. She’s just so convinced, so confident, that she’s supposed to care about this girl.

Maybe she would have anyway, given that Shmi is young and scared and has been through far too much for her small years.

Astrid wishes she were a better cook, because she keeps hearing her mother’s voice in her head, saying that feeding the little girl is the best way to help her feel better. With how scrawny Shmi is, and how she eats with the care of someone who does not want to lose a bite, but also knows the risk of overeating to the point of vomit, it’s more true than ever. Unfortunately, all the cooking’s being done by Ka-Reem, who can actually gauge how well the soup is doing with a taste test, instead of Astrid’s own ‘well… I think it’s okay? Maybe it’ll change when it cools down? How much salt is too much, anyway?’

She’s not terrible, if she’s got a recipe, but it’s really Ka-Reem’s realm of expertise.

“I keep dreaming of a husband,” Shmi says. “I meet him after my baby leaves with the Jedi.”

Astrid overthinks this sentence. There are too many possible reasons for the mixed emotions in Shmi’s voice. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Shmi’s eyes tighten, not meeting Astrid’s own, like she’s about to cry again. “I don’t know.”

That’s more than fair. “Do you think he was a good man?”

There’s a touch of hesitation, and then Shmi says, “yes. I don’t know if I—if she? If future me loved him. But I think she cared about him.”

“There was some affection,” Astrid says.

Shmi nods. “And I don’t think she was scared of him.”

That is… carrying some messages Astrid is ill-equipped to address. She puts a hand on Shmi’s and squeezes. “Maybe you’ll meet him again, someday. Be friends?”

The answer is preceded by a sniffle, and Shmi is absolutely trying not to cry. “Maybe.”

--

Leaving Stewjon had been tricky; they’re Deep Core, where the gravity and hyperlanes are painfully unreliable and prone to wobbles. The three of them had managed it, and made their way to Coruscant over the course of about a week, but then the approach to the capitol of the known galaxy had carried its own set of difficulties. Traffic control was also border patrol, which wasn’t unusual for populated planets, but it did mean they were immediately clocked as a stolen craft. They didn’t have any proper credentials, either.

“We have a Force Sensitive youth here that needs some help, and we’ll explain the theft in person, please,” only gets them so far.

Shmi trembles a little when she slips past Ka-Reem’s hand to press the speaker button herself. “I would like to talk to Qui-Gon, please.”

“…is that the Force-Sensitive kid?” the officer asks. “Is this Qui-Gon a Jedi?”

“Yes,” Shmi says. “He is human, and very tall.”

Astrid wonders, not for the first time, just how much Shmi remembers.

“Are there any other Jedi you claim to know?”

Shmi frowns. Bites her lip. Astrid puts a hand on her shoulder and squeezes. “Windu.”

“Are those first names or last? Or only?”

Astrid wants to curse as she sees Shmi’s eyes well with unshed tears. “I don’t… I don’t remember. There were other names, but I don’t… I think Yoda is one of the busy ones? And then… Rancissis? But I don’t know what that one looks like, or—or the one called Yarael, or Billaba, or…”

She sniffles, and Astrid gathers her into a hug. She widens her eyes at Ka-Reem in a silent do something, and he presses the speaker button. “Is there any chance of meeting with any of those? Or someone they know, maybe?”

“…I’ll see what I can do.”

--

They are met by two Jedi and handful of what appear to be law enforcement officers, though Astrid certainly wouldn’t know where to begin identifying the branch of government they belong to. One of the Jedi is very tall, a man not yet thirty, though it’s hard to tell, and the other is a teenager, dark-skinned and with a thin braid trailing over a shoulder.

“I am Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn,” the taller says. “And I heard you wanted to meet Padawan Windu, so I borrowed him from his studies for a few hours.”

The boy gives a short bow, but doesn’t say anything.

“So,” one of the officers says, “you said there was an explanation for the stolen craft?”

Shmi doesn’t say anything, just sniffs a little, and Astrid decides to do the talking for now. “Like I said, Shmi here is Force-Sensitive. She’s been experiencing something very… odd, and she stole the ship, then kidnapped us. Given the state of her mind in that time, and her age, I believe her when she says she doesn’t remember how she stole it.”

The officers don’t seem happy with that, but before they can ask much of anything, the tall Jedi strides forward and goes to one knee in front of Shmi. “Hello, young one.”

“Hi.”

The man smiles softly. “So, you’re Force Sensitive? Can you tell me why you supposedly stole the ship?”

“I had to find Obi-Wan Kenobi,” Shmi said. “But he’s not a person yet.”

Astrid tries not to grimace when Jinn looks at her for a more grounded answer. She places a hand on her belly. “I’m due in about four months. It’s one of the names we considered, and it is our family name.”

“He’s in there,” Shmi says, and then repeats, “but he’s not a person yet.”

“I see,” Jinn says. “Why did you need to find this Obi-Wan?”

“He…” she struggles for words, eyes flicking to the officers and other travelers and even the droids, and she shrinks back into Astrid’s space. “He was in the memories. Not mine. Anakin’s. But he was helpful. I didn’t realize he wasn’t a grown-up that could fix things.”

 Like everything else thus far, this brings up more question than answers.

“Why did you think Obi-Wan could fix things?” Jinn asks.

“He’s going to be Ani’s Jedi Master,” Shmi says. “In… a lot of years. More than twenty. Less than thirty. I don’t know, exactly. I think… something happened on Naboo?”

Astrid can’t see Shmi’s face now, but she can guess at how the girl is looking at the Jedi.

“She wasn’t entirely cognizant when she kidnapped us,” Astrid says, “but she did use the Force, we think. After it became clear how much distress she was experiencing, we decided to stay with her until the Jedi to make sure nothing else happened.”

“You’re willing to give up the craft to return to its original owners?” one of the officers asks.

“Yes, it’s not ours and we never intended it to be,” Astrid says. Ka-Reem, silent thus far, just shrugs. They’ll figure something out to get back to Stewjon.

Jinn stands, and offers a hand to Shmi. “Let’s go to the Temple, shall we?”

--

Shmi Skywalker is too old to be a Jedi Initiate. She is even older than Anakin was, in her future.

She’s also half-trained, in some ways, and dangerous. Not just to herself, but to the people around her, too. She’s killed, already, even before the memories, though it was a mercy to a man too infected to work, left to starve by the guards after the medicine was deemed too costly.

They do not make any such decisions yet, but they decide she should stay at the Temple at least long enough to sort out what’s happening her in head. The Force’s hand in this is clear, and so it is in the jurisdiction of the Jedi. They will take charge of Shmi—not possession like a slave, she is reassured, but guardianship of a child—until that is handled, and then they’ll see what their options are from there.

Astrid, allowed into the Healing Halls for Shmi’s chip removal, and then given a prenatal check-up for Sensitive pregnancies, offers to bring Shmi back to Stewjon with her. There are decent enough schools, the woman says, and she’s got plenty of cousins in various trades that could give her a taste of some work so she can decide on an apprenticeship, some day. The family owns a farm, too, if she’d prefer a simpler life.

Shmi appreciates the thought. She has a feeling it won’t come to be.

“You’ll have three or four years to decide for the baby,” Master Jinn tells the Kenobis. “There’s no need to commit to one path or the other until then.”

It’s not nice, the way that Astrid and Ka-Reem get all sad whenever someone mentions that Obi-Wan is going to be a Jedi. Shmi knows that they haven’t really decided yet, but she knows. It’s an inevitability. Obi-Wan Kenobi will be a Jedi, ever and always.

“If we do send him to you,” Ka-Reem says slowly, “and Shmi is still here…”

“She’ll be more than welcome to visit him, barring any unexpected circumstances,” Jinn assures them.

Shmi wonders if he thinks she is going to lose her mind. She’s spent a lot of time expecting madness to fill her future. The Jedi seem hopeful that she’ll be fine.

They introduce her to a man named Sifo-Dyas. He comes with a man who strikes such terror into Shmi’s heart that she bursts into tears on sight, and Jinn hustles the man in question out of the room. Shmi doesn’t fully understand what it is that scares her about the man; she doesn’t know the name, only half-recognizes the face, but something about his presence, possibly in this Force they talk about, says enemy danger SITH.

She tells the Jedi Master Dyas this. Mace Windu is in the room with the two of them, as he’s apparently decided that Shmi should have a known Jedi around, even if the knowing is of the ‘barely’ variant. Given that Jinn just left, she’s grateful for Mace’s presence.

Master Dyas is a Jedi known for his visions. She wonders if she’s supposed to know him, too.

--

In the coming years, much will change.

When she is fourteen, the Jedi will offer Shmi a place with the Temple. Not a Jedi herself, but they can provide room and board and schooling to join one of the Corps, or another position outside the knighthood. If not, they can give her access to one of the many schools of Coruscant, at least until she is of age, but they want to keep her close. She is still not quite stable.

Shmi does not like the adventure she remembers of the future. She does not like the danger it carries. She would be a good mechanic, she thinks, but she does not want to be. She could press to be a Jedi, given her half-trained state on arrival, but she doesn’t want that either.

Shmi Skywalker joins the Archives. Library Sciences, the civilian college calls it, but Shmi works with the Jedi. It’s all search functions and conservation of physical media and assessing sources. It’s not something she ever quite thought she’d be doing, but she likes it well enough. She chose it, and she is paid, and she can live in the Temple despite not quite being one of them. She has friends, if not many, and she is safe from the horrors of her childhood. She is being treated, ad infinitum, by the mind healers, but she is safe. She is even happy.

--

When she is sixteen, Obi-Wan arrives. Astrid and Ka-Reem bring him personally, and there is another child with them, all of six months and still carried in a sling. Obi-Wan sees Shmi, and his heart prods hers, and he breaks into a run.

Shmi goes to her knees to be of a height with Obi-Wan, letting him collide with her and hug hug hug.

“He talks about you a lot,” Astrid says. Shmi would hug her, too, but her arms are full of emotional toddler. “Even more about your Ani.”

Anakin is over a decade away, but Shmi looks forward to him, always.

“He’ll be happy here,” Shmi promises them. “I’ll make sure of it.”

--

When she is eighteen, Shmi finds herself kissing Mace Windu.

(Obi-Wan also finds her kissing Mace Windu. He tattles immediately to one Qui-Gon Jinn.)

(Shmi wishes she could have known enough to prevent the Xanatos disaster. Anakin had never met the man, and so…)

                                                                                            --                                                                     

Obi-Wan remembers more than Shmi, it sometimes seems. Or more clearly. Or both, or neither, or it’s only nightmares.

He lived the events, much more so than she did. He was Force sensitive, then and now.

But he is a child, and his mind is smaller than Shmi’s was when she first had her dreams of a future that won’t come, and it can’t hold everything without overflowing.

(This is why they don’t yet know of the names of the Sith.)

--

When she is twenty-four, Shmi argues with Qui-Gon Jinn until her face turns blue, but he still refuses to bend on the topic of taking on Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Obi-Wan, of course, undercuts the entire argument by telling them about the mines of Bandomeer.

It becomes a whole slave-busting operation, and somewhere along the way, Qui-Gon accepts the boy anyway.

--

When she is twenty-seven, Shmi feels a spark of life in her womb. She has not had a lover in her bed in months. The child, she could feel, came of the Force itself, no natural process.

“Hello, Anakin,” she whispers.

(She hopes he doesn’t remember too.)