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They tell you, in this world, to be loyal to your blood. Which strikes him as antiquated somehow. There are some planets, of course, that still use castes, feudal systems, the astronomically divine right of kings and queens. On some planets, you can be born a slave and die a slave and your children will be slaves and their children and so on down the line, and that, too, is loyalty, if you squint.
“It’s different, though,” the woman says, stirring her drink. “I mean, stars forbid anyone ever call me loyal to my job. Or my children.”
Shmi looks up at him, eyes clear, tilting her square jaw. “Loyalty is for Jedi. Just some philosophical thing.”
“Do you, ah. Have children?” He says. She laughs.
“Do I look like I have children?”
“I honestly don’t know,” he says, and laughs, too, haltingly. “It’s been - I don’t - “
“I’m twenty-four,” she says, mock-offended. “And I’d be a terrible mother, anyway. Drinking with you and leaving the children at home.”
She sets her hand down on the bar and brushes her fingers over his, which startles him. He jumps, and she draws her hand back, amused.
“Where did you say you were from again? I don’t mean to make fun, but I thought people were a bit more relaxed on Coruscant.”
“The Jedi Council hardly count as people,” he says, and she bursts out laughing. He reaches for her and it feels like instinct - it feels like fighting, the way his hands and feet just know what to do - but his hand lands just above her knee. Her dress is rough against his hand. He doesn’t know what he’s doing.
“I’ve never met a Jedi before,” she says, still giggling. “Are you all this forward?”
“Stars, no. You should see what some of them get up to on their meditations. I’m practically a prude.” Now they’re both laughing, and she’s leaning into him, and he has been so careful his entire life. There are so many things, he thinks, eyes on her thin lips, that he has never done before.
“Why would a Jedi even come to Tatooine anyway? Do you need sand? Machinists? Hutt-slime?”
Qui-Gon feigns surprise. “Our sand missions were supposed to be top secret! Who are you working for?”
“Bad guys. I don’t know. You’re good guys, right?” She says this very close to him, so close he can feel the little warm puffs of her breath.
“Yes,” he says, matching her, carefully. “We’re the good guys.” And he kisses her - quick, awkward, bristling with something he can’t name. Something he doesn’t know, which is incredible, because growing up in the Jedi temple, you start to believe you know everything. Like everything that ever was and ever will be is stretched out on this perfect green thread, and you, in the middle of it, can see all the way to either end. Thousands and thousands of years of perfect thread, and it completely failed to prepare him for something as simple as a first kiss.
The second is less awkward. By the third, the thread is forgotten.
“Then again,” he says. “Maybe I do need a machinist.”
It starts like this. With her, in the cantina. With her, in her claustrophobic clay house. With her, on two thick mats stacked up on the floor. On Coruscant, beds are lifted off the ground. On Coruscant, air is constantly hissing out of vents, and everything is cool and even. The heat on Tatooine makes it impossible to sleep. Sweat is pooling between her cheek and his chest.
He doesn’t know what has brought on this bout of rebellion. His whole life, he has been obedient. Or loyal. They pick you - this is critical to their process - before you’ve had a chance to do anything, see anything. They put you through their school, their training. They expect that you will be theirs forever, and that any other thing you might want - wealth, power, family, home - comes second. Because of your blood. He’s not supposed to be here.
And then, three days ago, they told him it was time to take a Padawan. And he told them he needed to be alone, to meditate on it, which, of course, they loved, and he picked the emptiest and most remote planet he could and Shmi found him in the sand on her way home from work. She was covered in cloth from her feet to the bridge of her nose, so that all he could see was her dark eyes and her fine, wispy brown hair.
She had pulled her mask down when she saw him. “You’re not from around here, are you?” And then, when he didn’t respond: “Come with me. Buy me a drink.”
He didn’t realize it would be so easy. He puts his hand on her back and she makes a small, contented sound.
In the morning, she wakes him up, though he doesn’t remember falling asleep.
“I have to go,” she says. “Are you leaving?” There’s nothing in her voice to betray what the right answer might be.
“No,” Qui-Gon says quickly. “Unless you want me to?”
“No,” she says. “Stay, if you want. I’ll be home around sunset.”
And he does. He goes out and finds someone who takes Galactic Cred and he buys a meal - some bread, some meat, a root vegetable he’s never seen before. She comes back late, well after dark, and they eat, and she says it’s strange. She says she’s never had it like that. She says he didn’t need to buy food, that she has food.
“I don’t mind,” he says.
“Fine, then. Waste your Jedi money,” she says, and smiles. “I’m worth it.”
It goes on like this. A week, then two. He cooks her dinner. Maybe it’s abnormal, how quickly he has come to rely on her. Maybe that’s why this sort of thing isn’t allowed. Then again, maybe he wouldn’t rely on her so much if he knew more about this. If she weren’t his first.
It might be confusing if it weren’t so simple.
“But you have to go back at some point, right?” She’s leaning in to him, their backs against the wall, their fingers laced together. “I mean, they need you for something, I assume.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he says.
“I’m not worried,” she says. “I was fine before you got here and I’ll be fine when you go.”
“If I go,” he says, and she turns to look at him.
“So you don’t have to go?”
“I didn’t say that,” he says, more quietly.
“So, enough of this. Stop being vague. What exactly are you doing here?”
“Just. Waiting. For the next part.”
“Oh, I see. I’m just an intermission. While you wait for the next part,” she says, with an edge of mocking that he can’t quite read.
“Maybe you are the next part,” he says, and she doesn’t answer for a long time.
“No,” she says finally. “They’re going to want you back eventually.”
By way of reply, he turns her face toward his and kisses her.
“Hey. Hey,” she says gently. “That’s not an answer.”
“It is,” he says, and kisses her again. It is.
A month. Two. Three. She likes candy, which, in the Outer Rim, means red lumps of sugar syrup, little pink bags he can only find every week or so. Every time he can’t, he imagines taking her to Coruscant, just for a minute. Just for a piece of chocolate.
They will call. They do. He ignores a dozen holograms from the Council. This is procedure - if he really were meditating, he should be ignoring them. Even if he weren’t, it’s a game they’ve played before. He does what he needs to and they tell him off when he gets back to Coruscant but they always send him out again. But it’s warm at night here and he likes the food and he likes her, maybe even loves her and he’s so sure that everything can stay perfectly balanced as long as he doesn’t move.
But it is impossible to stand still for as long as you need to. It was his favorite part of training, and he was the best at it, but it is impossible. Eventually, you twitch. Eventually, you fall down. Eventually, time moves forward, and you have to blink. Eventually -
“I’m pregnant,” she says, just the same way she sounded that first morning. Betraying nothing.
“Oh,” he says. “Pregnant.”
In a second, everything breaks. He feels stretched too tight. Maybe that’s why this sort of thing isn’t allowed.
“We can get married. I can take you with me. I’ll resign from the Order and we can-“
“Yes. Alright.” She’s moving around, picking things up at random - a piece of metal tubing, a pan with a broken handle. “Yes. Stars, I haven’t been off planet since I was young.”
“You’re pregnant,” he says, mostly to himself. “A baby. A child.”
He sits down, and a wave of calm rushes over him. Calm that feels like water. Like it comes from outside him. Calm like a voice. A parent’s voice, maybe. He’s never had a parent.
“No. I can’t resign,” he says, still talking to himself. “I can’t just- I don’t know how.”
“Then you’ll figure it out,” she says, whirling toward him. “Because this is big. You’re in too deep now. I’m in-“
“No. It’s not that. I just mean.” The voice is louder now. “It’s.” He will hate himself for the rest of his life for saying this. “We have rules. For a reason.”
“Then you stay here. We stay here. You stay here with me.”
She’s desperate. For the first time, he can see all the way through her.
“It’s like you said. It’s like you told me! I can’t stay here forever,” he says, more and more disgusted with the words coming out of his mouth. “I was never going to be able to stay forever.”
“This is forever,” she says. “This, right now. You owe me something now.”
“I know,” he says, and crosses the room to her. He wraps his arms around her, and she presses her face against his chest.
“You’re going to leave,” she says, and he expects her to cry. Wants her to cry.
“I can help you. Help your child,” he says. “I can get you off Tatooine.”
She doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t cry. She keeps her face pressed into him.
If, right then, she told him to stay, renounce the Jedi and make a life for himself, a family, on Tatooine, he would. If she cried, if she demanded. She doesn’t.
“You should go,” she says at last, blank, like she’s never wanted anything from him. “I won’t cause problems for you.”
“I can help you,” he says again.
“I don’t need your help,” she says, her face still against him. “I don’t need it.”
He leaves. He goes back to the Council.
“I’m ready,” he tells them. “I have found the necessary clarity.”