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Annie was never normal.
That's what saved her from being put to uglier uses on Tatooine: even though he denied it, Watto saw she had more uses than the average slave, and dared not wreck his genius mechanic for the sake of some passerby's sick pleasures. Instead he swore at her, beat her -- and left her to her own devices. Watto's Junk Shop got a reputation as the best in town, and it wasn't the Toydarian's work.
But, at the back of a mind filled with machinery and her mother, she could sense the despair and misery all around her. She understood what had happened when one of the other children disappeared off the street and never reappeared again. She knew why that fat slug dragged sad ladies around on chains. She felt the wounds from bar fights, the starvation from poverty, and the degradation of the have-nots by the haves.
And so she kept her mouth shut, learned to play the charming and rambunctious little boy (it was never safe for little girls on Mos Espa's streets), and worked like one possessed behind the scenes of Watto's shop. Like the child she was, she wasted her time on various mad dreams (she was going to escape by being a great droid designer, she was going to get rich off of being the planet's best Podracer), but she always kept her mind focused on one thing.
She would have power. She would go straight from the relative safety of Watto's shop to some place where she was the one in power, and if she wanted to hit some big, nasty person she would, and no one -- no one -- could stop her.
She swore it to herself, because there were only the slaves and the masters, and the moment she could help it she would no longer be a slave.
Annie was never normal. And now she knew why.
The Jedi came for her. They saved her.
Yes, they'd come for some whole other reason, but why would they have landed on Tatooine? What did Jedi have to do with a place like this? And why would they have decided she was special, and helped her?
It wasn't because the Jedi were good and they just did nice things. Annie noticed the twist when the Jedi did something to Watto's loaded die. They weren't content just to free a slave, they wanted her. And they weren't telling her why.
That was okay. It reminded her that no one really did things without wanting something from others, not even the Jedi. Remembering things like that kept her safe. It would be essential if she was going to be strong.
She wished being without her mother didn't hurt so much. But she was doing this, in part, for her mother. The Jedi would use her, and she would use them, and she would become more powerful than anyone on Tatooine, because the Jedi were more powerful than anyone. And then she'd come back and free all the slaves.
And the slavemasters would pay and pay and pay.
That was in the future, though, and she was really lonely now.
There was, however, a nice lady. The first, other than her mother, who'd ever shown her kindness. She talked to Annie, and held her, and helped her feel better. She didn't seem to do it for any reason, even -- not like the Jedi, who had a reason even if they wouldn't admit it. This nice lady did it just because she was nice.
Annie would remember that specially. She would remember it for a long, long time. She would remember it for longer than a nine-year-old could guess, no matter how old for her years.
For now, she told herself with a smile as she went to sleep that, when she became powerful, she'd make sure to do good things for the nice lady. She would do so many good things, to pay her back for being the first one to do nice things for her. Because that was what powerful people could do, and did. They did good things for their friends, and left everyone else in the dust.
When Annie was finished with her, the nice lady wouldn't be a mere handmaiden. She wouldn't be anything like that. Annie would make sure of that.
Annie was never normal. And now they'd given her a name for it.
"Chosen One". Chosen by who?
She would have thought "the Jedi", but it didn't seem so. She didn't think they'd even known she was eavesdropping on them.
They would have stopped if they'd known she'd overheard them. She was sure of that. After the way they'd looked at her...
She could still feel their gazes on her skin. Like... like... like she was nothing. Less than nothing. Something disgusting and abnormal and wrong. A part jammed somewhere it shouldn't fit, wires fused in the wrong order by an incompetent mechanic. Something that didn't fit in their world. Too old. She was only nine! But too old... something wrong with her... something...
She swore that ugly, green, wrinkled thing had looked into her with its bulging, too-knowing eyes. It had taken her apart, held her up to a light bright enough for its squinting eyes to see -- and cast her aside as a part just too worn-out to work, leaving her disassembled, shivering, and abandoned in a corner, to put herself back together if she willed it. Or not. Such things were below its concern.
It hadn't really reached into her, of course. "Master" or not, she would have lashed out at it if she'd felt it going into her inner sanctum, the one place she could really be herself. Her mind.
Yet it had those eyes, the sort her mother would have said "had seen it all and knew how it all went", and it didn't even need to look at her to know what was there. She was just another part to it. She bet she had a name in its technical manual. AN-E 009. Capacity: 20,000+ Midichlorians. Most frequently used as a Force-balancer, 009 is prone to spontaneous, dangerous failures, including feelings of fear and anger... If you can, trade yours in for a newer, better model as soon as you can...
She wanted to hate it, but she bet it could sense her from here. So she wouldn't. Not until she got far enough away, anyway. She'd numbed down her emotions and put on the polite, obedient, eager-to-please person she became for Watto when he drank too much and went looking for any excuse to take it out on his "two stupid slaves", and she thought she'd maybe gotten away with it. No use ruining it now.
She could hold this state for a while, she could, she would...
Annie was never normal. And now everyone knew it.
A lot of things had happened. The Jedi who wanted her to be the Chosen One was dead. Some bad man had killed him. But the other Jedi was alive, and the first Jedi had made him promise to make her his apprentice. That was good, and Annie felt regret that she couldn't have been of use to him while she was alive -- it felt like cheating -- but that was over now. All it meant was that there were some people who were stronger than some Jedi, but were still, in turn, weaker than other Jedi. She was the apprentice of the stronger Jedi now. She needed to feel happy for that.
The bad people who had taken over the nice lady's home planet were gone now. That was because of Annie -- which made her feel very special and pleased and happy, because she'd just done her first good thing for the nice lady, and she hadn't even had to be any stronger than she was now -- and because of the Gungans. Annie forced herself to pay attention to that, too: allies were valuable when it came to getting power.
And, wonderfully, it looked like she might have one, because there was a friend of the nice lady's who was also nice to her, and Annie understood him to be very important now. She wasn't sure of the particulars, but somehow he'd leaped from being just a sort of normal important person to the most powerful person in the whole galaxy in just a few days. That was amazing. All this "politics" stuff seemed like mystic gibberish to her, but she would force herself to try to learn if it meant you could do stuff like that.
The nice lady would understand. She'd faked being a handmaiden to fool everyone into letting their guard down, when she was really a queen, so she'd understand Annie faking being a kid who didn't understand anything to fool everyone into letting their guard down, when she was really someone who'd get to be someone who could give a queen things. Because Annie hadn't given up just because there was nothing a slave girl from Tatooine could given a queen from the prettiest water planet that girl couldn't even have dreamed existed. It just meant she would have to try harder. A lot harder. And become a lot more powerful.
She was learning there was a lot more to this galaxy than she'd ever been able to imagine.
That was wonderful. Because there were so many good things to take, and have, and share in this galaxy that she'd never get bored. And she'd never run out of things to conquer.
And she'd share them with people she cared about, like her mother and the nice lady, and none of them would ever be unhappy again.