Chapter Text
All seven clocks begin to chime, chirp, and buzz when the last rays of sunlight disappear behind the cramped neighborhood that houses most of Mos Espa’s slaves. Those who aren’t house servants are expected to remain confined to the slave quarter from an hour before sundown to an hour before daybreak, or earlier if they have permission to wander the streets of Mos Espa. The hovels were once temporary housing for the miners, but any profitable mines around Mos Espa ran dry a century ago.
Watchmen patrol the entrances and exits to the small ward, in case anyone gets any clever ideas about slipping out of the city by nightfall, but what would be the point? Most tracker chips are set to detonate a mile out from Mos Espa city limits. The enterprising would simply dig them out, but the chips are migratory and move throughout the body over the years; you’d have to be very lucky, or your chip defective, to be able to suddenly feel it under the skin of your neck or leg or wrist one day.
Still, most every slave Shmi knows has a habit of running their hands up and down their limbs whenever they have a moment’s rest. Searching, always searching, consciously or not. Waiting for some lucky day when they feel it, the way an expectant mother might anxiously wait for her baby’s kicks. But with Anakin, Shmi never waited, nor was there any anxiety. She felt him from the very first weeks, dancing in her belly until the very last days of her pregnancy. Even then, she was not worried. He was born early, but that’s Ani- impatient, always so impatient, restless and impulsive, and never, ever, tired, even when night comes.
Shmi pushes her stool back from her small workstation, clearing away the memory cards. Most of these are not salvageable, but she’ll be able to turn over a meager profit on two or three in the market this weekend. She and Anakin are allowed one day of rest per week, though if Watto calls her in to work she cannot refuse, of course. Even so, she is so exhausted most days that their rest day is the only day she has to clean their living quarters, purchase food and any other necessities, and try to make her own money, however little of it.
She switches off the clocks one by one, jangling each to make sure the credits are all accounted for. Clocks with no other function beyond timekeeping, even old, mostly broken ones like these, are a cheap novelty and the last place any thieves would look for money. Not that most thieves make a habit of breaking into the slave quarters, but Shmi grew up enslaved and knows what desperation can do to people. She’s seen slaves kill each other over food, a few measly credits, dice and card games, women, clean clothes- anything. Some of them were wild eyed from the start. Better to die fighting than live another day in this hell. How often has she heard that sentiment?
But Shmi has never been a fighter, not since the first time a collar was clamped around her neck, a tiny girl of five shrieking for her parents. Watto does not make his slaves go collared, but Gardulla, the master before him, did. Gardulla was far, far wealthier than Watto- she owned hundreds of slaves to maintain her lavish estate, while Watto owns just two. But she was also far crueller.
Watto is despicable and often goes back on his word, but his maliciousness and arrogance is stupid, not insidious. Gardulla would plot to make an example of you if you offended her in some way. Watto simply reacts in the moment, however poorly, and his temper is quelled by groveling as easily as it was stoked in the first place.
Shmi has had worse masters than both of them. She was fifteen when she was sold to Gardulla, but when she was Anakin’s age- it does not bear thinking about. That’s over. It’s done with. The past is the past, and no amount of grief or anger can change it. That is a lesson every survivor must learn. Don’t look back, Shmi has been telling herself since she was five years old and on the auction block for the first time.
Her mother was screaming for her, but she knew if she looked back, she would never truly look away again, and she would be trapped in this terrible moment. Instead she kept moving, one step in front of the other, and she’s maintained that trudging pace her entire life. She has been a slave for nearly forty years now, eight times as long as she was ever free. She doesn’t know what it means to be free.
But sometimes, she imagines it feels like this, these brief interludes, often darkened, shadowed, and fleeting. She carries the lamp from her small workshop into their sleeping space, which is really just a stone pit in the center of the room, laden down with a thin mattress and various ragged pillows and blankets. Tatooine nights can be brutally cold, despite the arid heat of the days.
Anakin was sitting up tinkering with something- he hates to sit with idle hands- while watching a grainy holovid projected on the wall. Shmi successfully repaired the projector for Watto two years ago, but he couldn’t get any buyers for such a defunct piece of junk, and eventually let her take it home from the shop.
It overheats easily and the picture quality is terrible, but Anakin adores it, even if they only have a few old vids to play on it. His life is so bereft of entertainment that he’s even willing to sit through this one, an old romantic drama set during a civil war on some Core world. Shmi has never been to the Core before; slavers steer well clear of the heart of the republic’s military, though she’s heard rumors that there are slaves on many core planets, only they go under different names there, working in sweat shops or brothels or illicit mining operations.
But she’s seen a map of the galaxy before; Tatooine is not so very far from the planet she was born on, another Outer Rim world. Shmi has no memories of it; her home was impoverished and wracked with war, and her father took a contract on a freighter class ship as a lowly mech tech when she was a toddler. He had not even fulfilled his first contract length when the freighter was attacked by pirates, who made off with thousands of credits worth of supplies and thousands of credits worth of slaves.
She has not seen her parents since she was five; their faces are fleshy blurs in her mind. They are in all likelihood dead by now, or at least, she hopes they are. The life of an aging slave who can no longer work hard enough to keep up with the young is miserable indeed. It is common for elderly slaves to be freed only to die on the street. She’d rather her parents have died quickly than be forced to waste away in crushing poverty.
Anakin’s head is lolling, and the parts he was tinkering with have spilled out of his lap and across the blankets.
“Ani,” she murmurs, letting the red light of the lantern in her hand fall over his face. She prefers to work in red light; it’s soothing. She was a little wrench rat during her first enslavement, and worked behind the walls, in the flickering red and green lights of a thousand electronic parts. She did not really know sunshine until she came to Tatooine a decade later, and now her skin is tanned and leathery for it; she looks closer to fifty than forty.
She does not mind; she was an ugly child and a plain-faced young woman, and even that was never enough to stave off unwanted harassment and attentions.
He stirs, then blinks rubbing at his eyes as she turns off the projector. “Mom, I was watching that!”
“You can finish it tomorrow night. It’s bedtime,” Shmi says firmly, preparing for a tantrum.
Anakin was and still is a strong-willed little boy, and now that he is ten he seems to be growing more and more stubborn and opinionated by the month. She has plenty of experience with children; most female slaves are used to looking after one another’s offspring or their master’s. Shmi was tending to infants when she was younger than Anakin, with the promise of a beating or starvation if she made any mistakes.
“But I’ll forget where I left off,” Anakin continues to complain, but clambers to his feet, his dirty blonde hair falling across his eyes. He needs a trim but she can’t bring herself to do it. Even as a baby he had such lovely blonde hair, though it’s darkened as he’s aged.
“You won’t forget,” Shmi says. “I taught you a trick to always remember things.”
Anakin shoots her a look over his shoulder, then says, doubtfully, “Hold it in my heart and squeeze it tight?” His tone verges on sarcastic; she’s dreading when it is outright snide.
She clenches a fist in his direction with a wan smile, he shakes his head and sighs, but trudges off to change into his sleeping tunic and brush his teeth. And wash his face, she hopes. He was out playing late in the dust today before she called him in for dinner. There’s not many other children in the slave quarters, and even fewer with any time at all to play, but Shmi always tries to give Anakin at least a little while every evening to just be a child.
It’s not perfect, but it’s better than nothing. It’s better than anything she ever got. She doesn’t think she ever knew how to play. Or how to love, until she met him. Other slaves look askance at her; but by their estimation, she spoils Anakin to the point of coddling him. What’s the point of allowing him a childhood when all he has to look forward to is crushing servitude? But Shmi is determined that will not be all.
It will be extremely expensive to buy Anakin’s freedom from Watto- assuming he doesn’t lose them in a bet or is forced to sell to avoid prison time for his own debts- but it’s not impossible. She’s heard of mothers and fathers purchasing their children’s freedom before, or children purchasing their parents. Anakin is intelligent and brave and strong. He’s special. Every mother thinks this, but Shmi knows it to be true. Anakin can do things no other child can. He could become things no other child could.
And he can’t achieve any of that if he lives and dies a slave. Anakin is too bright, too fiery. He will burn out quickly if he’s still in this life in his manhood. He will bristle and chafe at the binds around him and end up dead for it. Shmi will not survive her son. That has been her mission since she brought him into this world. He may lose her. He will lose her, before she ever loses him.
Other women in her place have not been so lucky. She’s seen slaves bury child after child, especially in as harsh an environment as Mos Espa, with little access to good food, medicine, or even healthy air to breathe. But not her. Not her. Never Anakin.
“Done!” Anakin comes back out of the washroom, which is really just a latrine and a hand pump, and even presses her warm hand to his damp face to prove he did wash.
“Good,” she pulls him close and presses a kiss to his head, savoring the fact that he is still small enough for her to do this much. In a few years, he might be nearly as tall as her and stronger, easily able to wriggle out of her grasp or ignore her instructions. That’s what she worries about. No just outside threats to Anakin, like Watto or other slaves or new masters, but himself.
It’s just the two of them; she cannot rely on anyone else to help her raise him. She has a few casual friends among the slave community here, but she mostly stuck to herself while raising Anakin, too consumed with her child to bother pursuing anything beyond casual acquaintances.
And while relations between slaves are not strictly forbidden, most men have little to no interest in a single mother, and even if they did… There is a reason she keeps a stolen blade under their mattress, and another in her boot during the day. Watto’s shop often attracts rough clientele, as do the pod races he sometimes cajoles or outright forces Anakin into, and she never wants to feel entirely defenseless, even if she is largely is, as a slave. Even other slaves, if their masters are wealthy and powerful, could exert that over her.
With Anakin settling down to bed, she does her own washing up, changing out of her grimy, dusty work clothes and into the plain shift and warm stockings she sleeps in. She lets her hair out of its pinned up braid, but only to put it up in a loose bun atop her head, and massages her face with a damp cloth, examining the lines around her dark eyes and flat, thin mouth, before she sets it down and joins Anakin.
Sometimes he is already fast asleep by the time she settles down beside him, but of course tonight he is wide awake. Shmi massages his back for a moment, then straightens out beside him. Sometimes Anakin sleeps curled up with his head on her chest, as he always did as an even younger boy, but other times he rolls away and kicks his legs to and thro, trying to get comfortable. Tonight he is clingy, though, which she tacitly approves of. She’d rather him turn to her too much than not at all.
“Mom,” he whispers. His breath smells like the cheap, gritty powder they use for their teeth, which only turns into paste once you mix it with water.
“Hm?” She’s exhausted, and can already feel her strength flagging. She worked hunched over tonight and her back will be in agony tomorrow. She has bad knees from a childhood spent on them, and her left elbow sometimes flares up- she landed on it wrong once as a teenager, after a particularly vicious beating. Anakin has seen the scars up and down her back and legs before, but thinks they are from a pod accident, rather than deliberate attacks.
Shock collars and cattle prods don’t leave as much of a mark, but an old fashioned whip or belt does, and Shmi has tasted all. Anakin never has, beyond the odd swat from Watto. She wants to keep it that way. He’s too old, now. Ten is too old to be beaten or tortured for the first time. He would rebel against it in outrage, rather than accept it as a fact of life. He would become infuriated over it.
She was furious too, the first time someone beat her for something that wasn’t her fault, but you have to chop up your anger and parcel it away for future occasions, not let it explode in the moment. Else she’d be dead.
“Is my dad a slave, too?”
Shmi exhales through her nose, eyes closed, one arm flung out to the side. They’ve had a few versions of this conversation before, but not for a long time. It is harder to navigate as he ages and learns to question more, to push back against her simplistic explanations. But it is simple. So very simple. Someday he’ll understand that some things have to be. Some things have to be simple to keep us alive and sane.
“No,” she says lightly, “why would you think that?”
“Balt says I’m slaveborn. Not like him.”
Balt is one of the sons of another slave who lives across the way, Brezza. All of Brezza’s sons were fathered by either her master, Lock, or one of his brothers. She can’t be sure.
It happens sometimes, attempts at hierarchies even among slaves. Those who were born free, those who were born of pregnancies forced on their mothers by their captors, or those born of ostensibly independent unions between two slaves who simply fell in love or clung to each other out of desperation. If Brezza wants to let her sons believe they are special, honored in some way because they are their owner’s children, Shmi can not truly blame her.
“You are not slaveborn,” she says, opening her eyes and glancing over at him. “You’re my son, and I’m your mother.”
“But you’re a slave. So am I.”
“A slave is what you do, not what you are,” she corrects. “You won’t always be a slave.”
“You always have,” he frowns.
“I wasn’t born one.”
“But I was. Isn’t that worse?”
“No,” she squeezes his hand in her own. “Because someday you’ll be freed.”
“What about you?”
“Don’t worry about me, Anakin. Go to sleep.” She smiles softly at him and tries to close her eyes again.
“Is my father a master, then?” he presses. “A human one?”
“No,” she says, firmly. No. Never. She would not let it be. Anakin was born of love. Or a need for love. Hers alone. Not from pain and fear and degradation. “You don’t have a father.”
“Mom, I know how babies are made,” he whispers in outrage. “I’m not dumb.”
“I know you’re not. You don’t have a father. Just me.” Her voice cracks slightly, and she knows he hears it.
“That’s not how it works. There has to be man for there to be a baby.”
“Not you,” she says. “You’re all mine. I prayed and prayed for someone to love, and an angel heard my wish and gave me you.”
“Angels aren’t real.”
“Yes they are,” she sighs. “I’ve told you. They live on the moons of Iego. A faraway place. They have glowing white skin made of the dust of dying stars and six shimmering golden wings. They can breathe in space. They’re the most beautiful creatures in the whole universe.”
“That sounds like a legend,” he mutters, but he’s settled some, drawn in by her description.
“Legends can be real, Ani.”
“Well, did you ever… see one?” he yawns in the middle of his question.
“Hm,” she nods, as she starts to drift off herself. “Yes. In my dreams.”
The next morning is an unexpected reprieve; business is slow, with the recent sand storms, and Watto doesn’t need two workers at the shop. He allows Shmi to return home to work, though she’s always reluctant to leave Anakin alone with Watto. He’s never injured Anakin, but Watto is impulsive and greedy and might decide on anything in the heat of the moment- signing Anakin up for another pod race, or even selling him to a particularly persuasive buyer.
Anakin is young and healthy; Shmi knows from personal experience how much child slaves go for, especially ones old enough to begin taking on an adult’s work. She has nightmares, sometimes, about returning to find her son missing and Watto counting his credits, a satisfied sneer on his face. She doesn’t know what she would do then.
There was no one left for her to lose after she was taken from her parents, but when Anakin was an infant, Gardulla would sometimes idly threaten to sell him if she thought Shmi was slacking in her work or insufficiently grateful for the ‘comforts’ of serving Huttese nobility. Shmi never allowed her fear and horror to show on her face, but she didn’t have to restrain her anger.
Unlike Anakin, she doesn’t flush or scowl when she’s upset. Her anger remains inside, under her skin, and it seeps into her core instead, tainting everything with slick black oil, like fuel to a fire. All she could think was, if you did such a thing, I would steal a vibro blade and gut you, Gardulla. I would open you from mouth to tail before they could detonate my chip.
But she can’t hover over Anakin forever, and it’s good for him to have some small measure of independence, even if it’s just cleaning the shop and running errands while Watto watches holovids or plays cards with his sleazy friends in his apartment upstairs. Shmi reminds him to eat lunch, and not to spend too long out back in the junkyard in the sun without water, and returns to the slave quarters to work.
The day passes uneventfully, though the weather worsens as the morning turns to afternoon. Brezza stops by to chat when Shmi takes a break to eat her midday meal. Moisture farmers are looking for workers, as usual, and she is considering sending Balt and her older sons out to farm, so long as Lock agrees. He would receive all their pay, of course, but they might be better treated by a farmer who needs their help to survive than by their own master father.
“You should see if Anakin could go out as well,” she tells Shmi, who is washing up after lunch. “It would be good for him, to be with boys his own age, get a taste of life outside the city… Watto would agree, you can talk him into anything, and he doesn’t need both of you to run the shop, most days.”
Shmi smiles neutrally, then says, “I’d rather Anakin stay here with me.”
“Why?” Brezza snorts, her gaze flickering around the cramped quarters. “Lonely? He’s growing up, Shmi. You can’t expect him to be happy to live here with you forever, playing with droids.”
Shmi bites back a retort, and shrugs. “I don’t think a farmer’s life would suit him.”
“Balt says he thinks he’s going to be a pro pod racer someday,” Brezza laughs. “Someone should tell him there’s not much money to be made racing around Outer Rim shitholes. They don’t even use pods in the Core.”
Let him have his dreams, Shmi thinks defiantly, it’s more than you or I ever got. But Brezza has had a harder life than her. Three boys to look after, and bound to a cruel master like Lock. Things could always be worse for Shmi. Most of her days are not joyous and carefree, but she is content for now, so long as Anakin is safe and happy.
After Brezza leaves, the wind kicks up even more, and Shmi can tell a storm is on the way. She peers out the window anxiously, hoping Anakin wasn’t caught out in it. If he has any sense he’ll be back at the shop, battening down the hatches and entertaining himself with some spare parts, but if he was out in the market, or goofing off with some friends in the junkyard…
She goes back to her workstation to distract herself, but jumps up when she hears the door slam open and shut, the howl of the wind abruptly cut off.
“Mom! Mom!”
Shmi hurries over, rubbing at the back of her sore neck, then blanches. Anakin is unharmed but not alone. With him are an older human man with greying hair, clad in nondescript robes, and a young girl of perhaps thirteen or fourteen in a plain blue tunic. They are accompanied by a blue and white droid.
Watto sold him to them, is the first panicked thought that crosses her mind- they may not be dripping in finery, but both stand tall and dignified, and their clothes are discreet but obviously well made. They could be father and daughter, though she has no idea what anyone of their ilk would be doing on Tatooine unless it was a diverted flight due to repairs.
“Ani, who is this?” she asks, as calmly as possible, trying not to sound too meek or too confrontational.
She steps towards Anakin, a hand outstretched, and is relieved when he comes forward, but he doesn’t take it as he usually would, glancing back anxiously at the girl, who is trying not to stare at the squalid conditions of the room. He’s embarrassed, she thinks. He should be. I’m not, but I think like a slave. He still thinks like a child.
“They came to the shop for parts for their ship,” Anakin says eagerly. “That’s Padme and this is-,” he hesitates, apparently realizing he doesn’t know the grave looking man’s name.
Shmi tenses, bracing for outrage, but the man only says, “Qui-Gon Jinn.”, inclining his head politely to Shmi. No one has ever done that much for her before.
“And this is Artoo,” the girl pipes up, “our droid. You have a lovely home, Madam.”
She speaks like she’s been trained- Shmi wonders if they work for the Republic. Tatooine is not entirely unknown to the Core, after all. Why are they here? Emissaries? Are they meeting with the Hutts? To attempt to place more heavy sanctions on the slave trade? But that’s just wishful thinking.
“They had nowhere to go when the storm hit,” Anakin explains, then brightens, turning back to Padme. “D’you want to see my droid? He’s going to be way more advanced than that one,” he jerks his head at Artoo, who beeps in offense. “Sorry. But it’s true.”
Padme glances at Shmi, then smiles graciously. “Of course. I’d love to see what you’re working on.”
She follows Anakin into the small back room; he’s been working on the C3PO unit for weeks now, and while Shmi initially guided him, she’s been hands off for some time. Anakin is a quick learner and works hard and intently; soon he’ll be a better mechanic than her. When he is free, he could set up his own shop, far more successful than Watto’s, on a wealthy Core world, or go to a university and train as an engineer for the Republic’s fleets.
For his children, her grandchildren, tales of slavery and life on Tatooine will seem like a scary bedtime story, nothing more. They will grow up educated and pampered, their every wish attended to, with a loving family that never knows what it’s like to go without food or water, or to sleep on hard floors. Even if she’s not alive to see the confusion and wonder on their faces. It will be worth it.
That leaves her temporarily alone with the man, Qui-Gon. Shmi examines him carefully, her hands clasped in front of her as if she were meeting with one of Watto’s rare wealthier clients. “Your son is a very kind and curious child,” he finally says.
Shmi smiles slightly in spite of her nerves. “Yes,” she says. “I am so proud of Anakin.”
“Special, too,” he says, in a more casual, almost offhand tone.
Shmi tenses, but refuses to let it show on her face, keeps her eyes wide and vacant, her mouth slack. It’s always better to be taken for simple and stupid than defiant or sullen. She learned that early on. Anakin is special. He can do things no other child- no other adults can. But she would gladly go to a torturous death a thousand times over rather than put him in danger.
Shmi doesn’t know much about the Core and what goes on there, but she knows power. She knows power when she sees it, she has spent her life shuffled from one power to another, a helpless pawn, part of the machinery. Anakin is just a little boy, but he has the potential to be powerful, and not just because of his intelligence and bold nature. But by the same token, that could put him in grave danger.
Power is supposed to bloom where it is planted, in the homes of the elite, the wealthy, the aristocratic. Not in the slave ward of Mos Espa on Tatooine. She’s seen power stamped out a dozen times- failed rebellions, slaves who were simply too popular with their peers, who their masters decided were a threat. Sold off or worse, made an example of.
“I hope so,” she settles on, innocently enough. “He works hard. I want him to have a good life.”
She can hear Anakin’s chatter in the next room, and Padme’s soft replies.
“Your daughter is very sweet,” she says, for want of anything else. Should she offer him some water? A dusty seat?
Qui-Gon looks bemused. “Padme is not my child,” he says. “Simply a traveling companion. We were on our way to Coruscant from Naboo, when our ship was damage by the Federation blockade.”
Shmi has heard vague reports of that, but the ongoing dispute between the Federation and the Republic matters little and less to most in the Outer Rim. There is always some debate or vote or grandstanding going on. The slave trade will never cease. She knows that much.
“From Naboo?” she echoes. “Is… are you nobility, sir?”
“Not me,” he smiles wryly. “But Padme was once in service to the queen.”
Naboo is a strange place; an elective monarchy where the rule of the young is encouraged. She suppose they believe it lends an air of innocent wisdom to the role. She pities the queen, whoever she is. Being responsible for just one life is difficult enough, but millions?
“Naboo has been invaded by Federation troops,” Qui-Gon continues. “We hope to appeal to the Galactic Senate to aid the planet and its people.”
Perhaps the Federation now rules Shmi’s homeworld as well. She doesn’t know if she would care. A slave has no attachment to one particular place. Their life is a series of traumatic moves.
“Then I wish you luck,” she says, bowing her head.
At that moment, something crackles- his comm link, maybe. He smiles again briefly at Shmi and steps aside to answer the call, speaking in a voice barely above a murmur. Shmi doesn’t want to be accused of eavesdropping, despite the man’s good manners so far, and checks on Anakin and the Naboo girl.
The C3PO unit is still dismembered, but Anakin has activated the power source, and it’s alert and chatting gaily away with the two children. Its accent is stereotypically Core, the sort of accent you hear in old holovids. Shmi smiles a little in amusement despite herself, crossing her arms over her chest, and scratching again at the side of her neck.
“I am most certainly not naked,” the unit is complaining to Artoo, who’s whistling mockingly at him, while Anakin laughs, loud and clear and unafraid, revealing his straight teeth and dimpled grin. He’s perfect. She doesn’t know how she produced such a perfect child. There are so many things wrong with her, but Anakin came into this world whole in a way she never was. Whole and perfect.
“I’m building a pod racer, too,” Anakin informs Padme, who is trying to contain her own giggles.
She glances over, sees the look on Shmi’s face, and quiets.
“You’re collecting parts,” Shmi corrects him. “We’ll discuss the pod racer later.”
Anakin reddens. “Anything I build would be way better than the crap heaps Watto makes me ride.”
“I don’t want you racing in the first place, I don’t care who builds the pod,” Shmi replies sternly.
Pod racing is lucrative in Mos Espa, but incredibly dangerous. Freeborn children aren’t even allowed to participate until they’re sixteen, but there are no such safety regulations for slaves. Shmi has seen racers lose hands, wings, tails, eyes in crashes. She won’t have Anakin disfigured or maimed before his twelfth year. Or worse.
“You should listen to your mother,” Padme tells the younger boy.
Anakin pulls a face, dismayed the girl he’s trying to impress is siding with Shmi.
“Whatever,” he grumbles, in true ten year old fashion, then perks up again. “Oh! Do you want to watch a holovid? We can start the one I was watching last night all over again. It’s kind of long and romantic,” he wrinkles his nose, “but there’s some cool fight scenes-,”
He bustles past Shmi without a backwards glance; Padme offers Shmi a reserved smile, then follows.
“-running out of time,” Qui-Gon is saying tersely into his comm link when they return to the common area, but then slips it back into his robes, expression composed once more. He’s a handsome man, in a stately, severe sort of way, though he looks more like some kind of monk than a diplomat. And he’s carrying some kind of weapon on his hip- Shmi can’t see it, but she can sense it from the way he moves. Whatever it is, she doesn’t think it’s a blaster.
The children settle down to watch a holovid on the floor cushions. Anakin sits up straight and proper for once, while Padme looks a bit askance, as if she’s never done such a thing before, and finally composes herself on her knees, her hands in her lap, as if she’s at a religious service.
Shmi takes refuge in the kitchen, noting the howling wind outside, rattling at the shutters, but Qui-Gon has followed her.
“Earlier, your son asked me if I was a Jedi Knight,” he informs her.
Shmi stops and stares, then says, “I’m not sure where he got that idea.”
She’s heard of the Jedi, distantly, vaguely. One of many sects scurrying about the galaxy. They take children. That’s what she’s heard. Once in a while, one will show up at a slave auction, parse through the lots, flanked by armed guards to make sure they don’t attempt to free the rest of the merchandise, select a child, usually very young- no older than five or six- purchase them, and leave.
Acolytes, she’s assuming, to work in their temples. Sweep their floors, cook their meals, light their prayer fires or ring their bells or whatever they do.
“He saw my saber,” Qui-Gon says. “Through my robes, he sensed it.”
Shmi feels her lips twitch. So she is speaking to a Jedi. She heard they could read minds, too, or at least make you think they could. “Perhaps he’s more observant than you think.” They always underestimate slaves. A slave has to take notice of small details, little behaviors like that. It could mean the difference between life and death.
“Perhaps,” he agrees. “But I’ve noticed other things.”
The fear comes roaring back, and beneath it, the oily anger, loosening her bones and her tongue. “We know nothing of Jedi,” she says quickly. “Nor do we wish to. No offense intended, sir.”
“Jinn is fine,” he says. “As is Qui-Gon. I am not your master.”
Her neck prickles in annoyance. “You are not,” Shmi agrees, sharper than she meant. “And you have no authority over us. My son is very clever, and he will be sorry to see you and the handmaid go, but-,”
“I have no wish to take your son from you,” he says. “But I will be frank. He is gifted in the Force. Unusually so. I could sense it from the moment I met him. And Watto- your master, will not accept Republic credits, only Federation coin.”
Shmi steps back, considering the knife in her boot. “So?”
“There is a pod race tomorrow morning. I’m prepared to make a bet on it.”
She does not like the sound of this at all. “A bet for what?” Shmi asks softly.
Qui-Gon smiles. It’s not cruel, nor is it reassuring, and it scarcely reaches his tired eyes. He can’t be much older than her, but he has the eyes of a man who has seen too much. She’s seen those eyes before. On slaves and masters alike.
“For the hyperdrive part we require… and for Anakin’s freedom,” he says. “Anakin says you are a skilled mechanic as well, and he has parts for a new racing pod-,”
“You think I should bend over backwards to help you steal my child from me?” Shmi snaps.
Fortunately, Anakin and Padme are engrossed in the holovid, unaware of the argument in the next room.
“What kind of life is this for him?” Qui-Gon asks, more gently. “You cannot truly wish him to remain a slave with you.”
“I do not, but I don’t need an arrogant Jedi’s help to win our freedom,” Shmi retorts, then blanches. She should not have spoken so. Jinn is not her master, but he is powerful, she knows that much.
But he does not reply in kind. “If I though Watto would agree to a bet to free both of you, and give us the part, I would, but I think you must know he will never concede to such a loss.”
“Then perhaps you could reimburse him,” she says, feeling her eyes start to sting with unshed tears. No. She will not cry. Not like this, not here. Anakin might see. “How much is your saber worth?”
That gets a reaction from him. He frowns, a hand hovering at his belt. “My saber is not for sale.”
“Nor should my son be!”
Jinn looks struck by that; he glances away, at the shuttered windows, listening to the storm rage outside. “I am very sorry, Madam-,” he pauses. “I never caught your name.”
“I did not give it,” she says curtly, then relents. “Shmi.”
“Shmi,” he pronounces it carefully, not slurring it the way many do. “I can see you love your son. And you are clearly a clever, capable woman-,”
“Don’t flatter me,” she warns. It doesn’t work on her any more than threats would.
“It might take you years to gain Anakin’s freedom. But he could win it for himself. Tomorrow. In a day.”
“Or he could die in a dangerous pod race.”
“If he stays here, he will die all the same. His spirit before his body,” Qui-Gon says, sorrowfully.
Shmi feels the temptation of tears again, but looks down and a way, touching at her neck. Then stops.
“Are you ill, Shmi?” Jinn asks her after a moment. “You have been scratching at your neck all this while. I don’t have much, but we brought a simple medpack from the ship, and I have some training in healing-,”
Her gaze snaps back up to meet him, a hand still clamped on her neck. Underneath it, she can feel the chip, buzzing like a tiny fly. It’s stopped. She can’t explain how or why, but for now, the chip is stuck under the skin of her neck.
If Anakin wins the race tomorrow, if she can build him a pod overnight, his chip will be removed by Watto, with a special master tool. But the only ways hers will ever come out is if it detonates- or if she removes it herself.
“Shmi?” He is looking at her in open concern now, reaching a hand to steady her as if she might faint into his arms.
Shmi bats it away the way she would a bug. “Does your medpack have a mini laser?” she asks.
Qui-Gon’s eyes flick from her face to her neck, the way she is holding it.
“If you hit an artery-,”
Shmi trusts her hands, skillful and deft, more than any other part of her beaten down and broken body. She has never dropped a tool, never cut the wrong wire, never had to re-drill or screw something. First fear drove her to perfectionism, than pride in her work, but now she wonders if it was something else guiding her hand all along.
“I won’t,” she says, and offers him a thin-lipped, bloodless smile in return.