Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

What off-worlders don’t know is that the desert gets cold. When the last of the twin suns’ light has dipped below the horizon and desert winds continue to blow, one could almost, almost be forgiven for wishing for the heat of the day.

It is with this thought in mind that Shmi finally pulls her sleep clothes on, shivering, working more by instinct than with any real thought in mind other than sleep.

She peers at her boy reflected in the moonlight, curled in the sheets, and for a moment allows herself the gentleness Tatooine has tried its best to beat out of her. She smiles, traces a hand along his jaw, still soft with childhood, and then slips into bed beside him. He doesn’t stir.

It’s this same bone-deep tiredness that pulls her into sleep easily.

Shmi almost never dreams. She expects it’s simply a byproduct of exhaustion.

Tonight, she dreams. She dreams of a city beyond her imagination. She dreams of a woman she’s never met. She dreams of a dark night and soldiers dressed in uniforms she’s never seen and children’s screams and unimaginable loss.

She dreams of fire and a dark mask and a red blade made of light and death.

She wakes, sticky with sweat despite the cold, and knows something has changed. Knows, somehow, that this is true, this is real, and yet not.

She looks down at her son and she knows.

Shmi does not get back to sleep that night. She sits, curled in blankets, and watches the moonlight creep over her son’s face.

She tries not to think of the future, as a rule. There’s no future for people like them, afterall. It’s not worth pondering what they can’t have. They’re alive, and healthy enough, and together, and that’s enough for her.

Now, she finds herself wondering. Wondering what changes will come, wondering if she’ll ever get off this planet, if she’ll ever be able to wander the galaxy the way she’s wanted to since she was a little girl.

Wondering how her baby boy will become something else. And wondering where she’ll be when it happens.

Every time she closes her eyes she sees the dark of the mask. She sees snapshot upon snapshot of what she knows, now, what she can’t deny, her little boy will do.

She traces with her eyes the face of the boy sleeping beside her, the baby fat clinging to his cheeks and his hair bleached by the suns.

And she knows she cannot allow this.

Shmi’s life has been filled with what has been expected of her, what she has been told, demanded, ordered to do. She has had very little say, all things considered, in her life at large. She, more than anyone, has very little sway over fate.

But she stares it in the face, stares at the dark in their shared room, and says No.

When the first shreds of dawn peek through their threadbare curtains, Shmi tells herself it’s time to put aside such things as nebulous as fate, as the future.

People like her, people like them… they don’t have the luxury of thinking of such things.

All she can do for her son is what she has always done. And that is what she will do.

She’s preparing their morning meal when Ani gasps awake, twisting himself in the blanket in his haste to sit up.

Any other morning, she would be at his side in an instant, but this morning illusions of violence are still lurking in the corners of her vision and motherly intuition says this isn’t the moment. Instead, she simply watches as her little son suddenly looks like someone she has never met before.

She keeps her distance as he calms, eyes blinking in the dawn and light reflecting in the whites. And then he turns and looks at her.

He’s throwing himself at her before she even really has a moment to recognize it, and if she weren’t already on her knees she knows he would’ve barreled her over with the force of his embrace.

It’s terribly, horribly different from any other hug from her boy. Somehow, she knows that child is lost. She isn’t sure how she knows, and she tries to tell herself it’s just a projection of her memory of her nightmare from before, but she can’t convince herself.

She’s holding someone she doesn’t know, and yet does, because no matter who he is, he’s her son, and she has no doubt of that no matter how many other unanswered questions curdle on her tongue.

So she holds him, and pretends it doesn’t feel like a stranger and not at all.

Things change after that night, and don’t.

They don’t talk about the change. He is not a child anymore, not in anything more than body, though she isn’t sure entirely on who or what he truly is now.

He’s her boy, and not, and someone she doesn’t know.
She’s not sure what to think, but in the end she decides there’s not much to think about it at all. Her son is her son is her son.

Perhaps that’s wrong, with what she’s seen. Perhaps it’s wrong to view him as such, someone who she knows has done horrible things— or has he? Have these things happened? Will they? She doesn’t know, but she knows it’s real like she knows the lines on her hands— but she cannot help it.

She is a mother, and he is her son.

She does not ignore, and she does not forgive, for it is not her right. And she does not have the time nor the energy nor the knowledge to consider these things. And so she simply accepts.

Shmi has always adapted. It’s the only reason she’s alive. And she adapts.

In the end, not much changes.

Chapter Text

Qui-Gon has been on Tatooine for no more than a few standard hours and already he wants nothing more than to be off it. There’s a strange feeling to it; he feels vaguely, strangely, in ways he hasn’t before, that he is not supposed to be here. That there is something wrong with the very planet itself.

It’s a foreign feeling, and the longer they stay the stronger it feels. It’s almost a stain in the Force, and that more than anything convinces him it’s not the planet, or at least not entirely. It’s something. Someone, perhaps.

When he was making to step out of the ship initially, Obi-Wan had thrown him a glance that said he felt it too. Qui-Gon did his best to shove reassurance at him, but even he couldn’t help to admit that something about it all unsettled him.

As they make their way further into town, the feeling only grows stronger. He feels, more and more increasingly, as though he is simply just not meant to be here.

It doesn’t seem targeted, oddly enough. It doesn’t feel as though whatever entity is so unwelcoming is entirely aware of his presence, but moreso just as though it’s displeased.

And then he feels the pull. He feels the Force as though it’s shock coated in disdain, coated in anger, coated in horror, as though it’s thrashing. It’s overwhelming in its intensity, in its potency, and for a moment Qui-Gon feels bowled off his feet.

And then it’s gone, just like that, snuffed out like a candle. Or like someone who knows well how to control their presence and was simply caught off guard, someone who had realized he was there.

Well, then.

He finds himself looking for the presence in the faces of the people they pass by, but it’s a futile effort. Whoever he sensed, they had tamped hard down on whatever had caused their initial reaction.

The disappearance is perhaps in and of itself a stranger sensation than the original feeling itself. He feels like a pressure has stepped itself off his chest, but then again, it’s like a blank space in the air where a person should be.

Qui-Gon shakes it off, and he and his group try as best they can to find a shop.

He has had the fortune, thus far, as has much of the wider galaxy, of avoiding Tatooine. He’d heard many things, of course, but he’d never before had a need to grace its surface.

Of course, had he had the chance, this would not have changed. But as he had not, he instead braces himself.

Qui-Gon finds himself, almost against himself, conducting business with perhaps the most unpleasant of Toydarians the galaxy has to offer. He knows very well he is being ripped off, thank you very much, but they don’t have many other options, and then––

A boy runs into the shop, and it’s like the popping of a balloon, of the discomfort of coming up for air after a dive, of ears popping at a change in altitude.

And Qui-Gon thinks, Ah. That’s it, then.

He has found the presence, and it’s a child with the strangest Force signature he has ever seen.

Qui-Gon is not and has never been a seeker, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t found younglings. He has never, of course, found a child this old. He has never, of course, ever been on Tatooine, either.

The boy doesn’t seem to notice him, but Qui-Gon knows better than that. The child’s Force signature is carefully concealed, far better than someone his age should be able to achieve, but even still it’s leaking out like water through cracks in a glass, like someone trying to catch sand in their fingers. And even with this cursory glance, he can tell: this youngling is unlike anyone, anything he has seen.

Qui-Gon knows, then, that this unfortunate and inopportune trip to Tatooine’s surface has not been in vain. For he has found the planet’s third sun.

The child resolutely ignores them. Qui-Gon thinks at first that he may simply be reading too much into it, his focus honed in as it is on his unusual Force signature. It quickly becomes clear this is not the case.

No. He is very deliberately being ignored.

And so they follow him, because Qui-Gon is fascinated.

Qui-Gon knows–– he knows–– that this child is important. He knows he cannot let him simply run on past with his... everything, with whatever immeasurable ability he has tucked away in the folds of his sand-covered tunic.

The queen's handmaiden does not know the same. She shoots him what she probably thinks are well-hidden looks, but Qui-Gon gestures for her to be quiet, and she fortunately follows his direction.

He's certain the child knows he's being followed. He does a good show of pretending, but if Qui-Gon focuses, very very closely, he can feel the vaguest tendrils of the boy's signature reaching out intermittently.

They're led from Watto's shop what could barely be called the stretch of commerce and through to an even more rundown neighborhood, and Qui-Gon realizes, Oh.

Perhaps he'd been fooled by the pride evident in the boy's posture, but he is not naïve, and he knows very well what this means.

He’s distracted from those thoughts when the child turns to them, then.

“Are you just going to allow yourselves to be caught up in the sandstorm?” He demands, his voice imbued with so much feeling it would seem precocious on anyone else but seems fitting on him. “I thought you were a Jedi.”

Qui-Gon blinks and wonders how no one else on this planet but the youngling recognizes him. But as unwise as it is, he doesn’t feel threatened. Simply chastised.

“We’ll head back to our ship,” he explains. “But thank you for your warning.”

“And you will die,” the child states.

Qui-Gon hums. The wind is already starting to pick up, swirling sand around their feet and ankles. The child is likely right.

“Is there someplace we could shelter?” The queen’s handmaiden– Padmé, her name is– asks from beside him. The child shifts his heavy gaze to her, expression tightening. He seems unduly offended by her ask, reasonable as it is.

“That’s none of my business.”

Qui-Gon opens his mouth to try to protest, but he’s cut off by another voice.

“Ani?”

A woman pops out of one of the doors– they’re small homes, Qui-Gon realizes– with a worried look on her face. She zeroes in on the child and scolds, “I was worried about you.”

Qui-Gon can’t help but smile at the scene of this strange youngling being reprimanded like any other despite his undeniable oddness. It’s strangely comforting, not least because the boy’s hard eyes immediately soften in her presence, and he seems so much younger, all of a sudden, more his apparent age.

Then the woman seems to notice his strange entourage, and she straightens.

“Are you with Ani?” She asks, half gently, half apprehensively. Qui-Gon reads the tightness in her presence. “Do you need shelter for the storm?”

Qui-Gon nods deeply. “If you have room, it would be terribly appreciated.”

She softens.

“Always,” she says, and she ushers the small group in.

Qui-Gon spends the evening trying to softly ignore the death glares the child probably thinks he's doing a good job of masking and gently trying to pry information out of Shmi Skywalker.

He learns the boy's name: Anakin Skywalker. He rolls it around in his mouth, incurably and unequivocally fascinated with this child and who he is, what he is.

He learns more than he could have hoped. He learns he was correct about the small family's predicament. He learns more about Tatooine.

He learns about the upcoming podrace. He learns about the importance of winning.

An idea grows in his mind.

He likes to think there would be more trepidation, if he were more convinced this child truly were one. If the little blond thing didn't have whispers of power around him every time Qui-Gon saw him out of the corner of his eye.

(Of course, he has no way of knowing this is not true. But Ani does. For Ani knows all of this, knows what happens before and after in this and so many worlds.

Qui-Gon does not, but perhaps he should.)

As such, Qui-Gon does not hesitate to put the boy forward for the race when Shmi mentions his aptitude. For he has no reason not to, when he has always been a pragmatic man and has prophecy in the back of his mind besides.

Shmi gives him a sharp look when he mentions it, but she doesn't protest, or at least not much past a few grumbles. He doesn't intend to get on her bad side, but it's difficult when he can't help but resist the urge to ask her how she attempts to parent something like this.

Dinner is a short affair after that. Ani continually has very little interest in him–– Qui-Gon can't tell if he's done something to offend, but from the way Ani seems to avoid the queen's handmaiden even more ardently he begins to suspect it's simply in the child's nature.

(And perhaps it is, if not in the way he might think.)

Qui-Gon approaches the Toydarian the next morning on the possibility of a bet.

It's easier than he'd expected, and he hadn't expected much. Watto is a horrible creature, and he is easily swayed by money if nothing else.

Watto throws the die.

Qui-Gon eyes it, watches it fall, reaches out to subtly shift it—

And then a pressure hits him, the force of a million hands, and the die shifts back. He gasps despite himself, the exhalation of breath as the wind is knocked out of him. For a moment he stands frozen, and then, despite himself, his gaze snaps up.

Ani is staring back at him from across the room.

Qui-Gon’s thoughts race. That was so much… more than he’d expected. He’d expected much, and yet––

And yet, he knows— he knows— that it must have been. He felt, in the supernova of strength, the traces he’s sensed around Ani.

It should not be possible.

(But through the Force, all things are. He smiles.)

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Watto leers. “Didn’t get the result you were looking for?”

Qui-Gon pulls his gaze away, leans down to pick up the die, and holds it in his fingers like it will give him answers.

He schools his expression carefully, and says, “What do you think of a more intense bet?”

Watto grunts expectantly.

“Say, if Ani were to win… easily, let’s say. Without damage done to his racer. Would that be worth both him and his mother?”

Watto squints at him for a moment, as though he can’t quite believe Qui-Gon’s words, and Qui-Gon can’t quite blame him.

He wonders if he’s making a horrible mistake. All the same, he feels— he knows— it’s right. That he’s right.

That Anakin Skywalker will, somehow, succeed.

Qui-Gon is startled out of his thoughts by an ugly bark of laughter.

“You’re not kidding!” Watto exclaims.

“I’m not,” Qui-Gon confirms with a nod. Internally, he laughs at himself. If Obi-Wan knew what he was doing…

Watto bares his teeth in what is a mean grin. “Well, then. I can’t turn that down, Master Jedi.”

And despite how ill-advised this is, how much of a mistake he must by all accounts be making, Qui-Gon can’t bring himself to regret his bet. Because he knows, somehow, somehow, it will work. He knows Ani will win. For this supernova couldn’t not.

In the coming days, Qui-Gon finds it impossible to find the child. Ani does a spectacular job of avoiding him.

After days of unsuccessful attempt, he finally corners manages to corner him when Ani's at work on the podracer.

The child refuses to look at him, acts as though he’s not even there, and Qui-Gon feels out of his depth. He knows how to deal with younglings, likes them even, but Ani is unlike any child he has ever encountered.

He brushes up against Ani’s half-concealed Force presence, and the child in front of him cannot hide the way he bristles.

Qui-Gon settles against the outer wall of the building behind them, leaning back against the rock. It still holds the last remnants of the day's heat, holding on even in the dusk.

They sit in silence for a few moments, only the sound of tool on machinery and creatures in the distance filling the air.

Qui-Gon leans forward, sighing to himself. “Are you confident in your ability to win?”

Ani gives him a look. It is, altogether, unimpressed. Qui-Gon considers it a win that he looks at him at all.

“I'm confident,” he says with a twist of his wrench.

Something stops Qui-Gon from telling him about the bet. With what he knows of Ani's abilities, perhaps he assumes the boy already knows. Perhaps he wants to keep it a suprise, when Ani pulls it off. Perhaps he's not sure why.

Neither of them say anything, after that. Qui-Gon watches him for a few minutes more, and then he makes his way back into the house.

Ani stays out for a long while after that.

It’s just as expected. Ani wins easily.

Qui-Gon can’t stop himself from turning to Shmi as the final lap finishes. Her expression is indecipherable, some mix of pride and fear and worry and relief.

Since he chanced upon this odd family, he’s had the sense Shmi knows something of her son’s… oddities. She’s not Force-sensitive, certainly not, and yet…

And yet, there’s something to her. Something that says she is more than aware, that she is wildly, terribly cognizant of something or other that curls in the Force like a warning.

He leans closer. “You knew he could do this.”

She looks up at him, and there’s a sort of guard to her gaze, though her tone is jovial. “He’s my son. Of course I did.”

He almost says, That’s not what I meant.

Instead he says, “You must be proud.”

She does not smile. They both know what he means. “Of course I am.”

He leaves to help her son out of a podracer far too big for him, and he tries not to laugh at the irony of it all.

Qui-Gon finds Ani in the evening, suns setting in the distance. He’s settled himself on a low stone wall, staring out into the wastes.

For a moment Qui-Gon catches him out of the corner of his eye and his silhouette seems much larger than the little boy he is. Qui-Gon sternly tells the Force to stop messing with him.

Ani looks up at him, and Qui-Gon nods his hello, settles beside him. They stay quiet for a long moment. He cuts his losses and starts.

“Do you know what I’m going to ask you?” He asks.

“I can guess,” Ani says in the far-too-old tone of his little voice.

Qui-Gon decides he’s a little bit done treating this kid like one. “You could come with us, if you’d like. I would teach you to be a Jedi.”

“I’ve no interest in the Jedi,” Ani says in a voice that says he very much does indeed have an interest in the Jedi, but Qui-Gon doesn’t point it out.

“That’s your choice. In my eyes, though…” He sighs. “It would be a terrible waste of your talent.”

“No such thing,” Ani huffs. He holds out a hand. “The credits you won.”

Once again, Qui-Gon does not point out he didn’t tell Ani about the credits, about their freedom. Instead, he simply chuckles and hands them over.

Ani cradles them to his chest in the most blatant act of tenderness Qui-Gon’s seen from him. There’s a sort of vulnerability there, like an animal showing its soft belly, and it makes the Jedi want to avert his eyes.

Ani climbs to his feet, then turns back to him.

“When you leave,” he starts. “I expect you to tell no one of my presence here. Mine or my mother’s. You will leave us alone, and the rest of the Jedi will as well.”

Qui-Gon blinks. He feels, again, the pressure of the Force, pulsating around the child in front of him. He has the urge both to pull back and to lean forward, the urge to run and the urge to absorb every bit of information Ani is letting leak through the cracks of his carefully constructed walls.

He’s so terribly intrigued by this boy. He yearns to know where and how he’s learned any of this, who he is, what he is.

But he won’t.

“I understand entirely,” he answers. “Me and mine will be gone by morning.”

Ani shakes his head firmly. “Tonight. You will leave tonight.”

Qui-Gon opens his mouth to protest, and then he catches the look in the kid’s eye. He resists the urge to frown.

This isn’t rudeness. This is a warning.

Finally, he nods. “We’ll leave tonight.”

Ani watches him for a long moment, and Qui-Gon gets the sense he’s being analyzed. He keeps his gaze.

Eventually, Ani must have whatever answer he was looking for, because he nods once, decisively, and turns again to leave.

Qui-Gon watches him disappear into his home and gets the sense that this will be the last time he sees him.

Chapter Text

Somehow, Maul has made a miscalculation.

The Jedi had left before he got there. He believes they left overnight. It had been entirely against everything he’d expected, and he bristles with the indignity of it all. He’s angry at himself, more than anyone else, because he should have expected it, and it’s a stupid, terrible mistake to have made.

He’s distracted from this series of thoughts and the crushing, humiliating feeling that his master will be horribly displeased by the realization that there’s a figure making its way through the sand.

After a few moments, Maul decides they are indeed heading toward him. They’re small, perhaps a child. He sits back on his speeder, waiting.

Something in him bristles at this stranger. He can’t exactly parse what it is, but there’s something… something in their Force signature.

He shakes it off. It doesn’t matter.

It is indeed a human child. He’s not well acquainted with human ages, but he knows they can’t yet be even a teenager. He raises his chin as they stop in front of him, hand up to block their eyes from the suns. He waits for them to speak.

They don’t. They seem to be examining him, tilting their head almost imperceptibly, and he bristles again. Something in their expression has him second-guessing his initial estimation of their age. They certainly don’t seem like a child.

He is not known for his patience.

“Spit it out,” he hisses.

“Well met, Maul.” The human’s voice is pitched low, and Maul has to strain to hear them over the desert winds.

“What is your business?” Maul growls. He’s realized what it is that unsettles him. It’s carefully hidden, carefully and masterfully concealed in a way this little, pathetic thing should find impossible, but the Force screams around them. It’s painful, almost, cutting into his skin like the many small marks of a sandstorm. And yet, they seem at peace, or something resembling it.

No, he realizes. It’s not peace. It’s determination. It makes Maul’s skin crawl. He feels small. He feels like prey.

He has never been afraid of anyone but his master. That will not change.

The human tilts their head, seemingly appraising him.

“I would send a message,” they say, and this time something creeps into their carefully neutral voice. A note of something more.

“I am not a messenger,” Maul responds evenly.

They smile, slowly, a little thing that sends every prey instinct in him wanting to scurry. He shakes it off.

“Tell your master something for me,” they say, spitting the word ‘master’ like it’s a curse.

Maul has to resist the urge to react, but he just barely manages to conceal his surprise and discomfort. Who is this child? He bares his teeth. “And what would you say?”

The child’s eyes glitter. They lean closer. “Tell him he will die. And tell him I will kill him.”

His first urge is to laugh at the absurdity. His second is to shiver, even in the heat of the desert, for the mere idea of his master dying is so scandalous it borders on blasphemy.

His third is to realize that this tiny thing truly believes it will kill Darth Sidious. He’s not sure what to make of that. Of any of this.

“Who is this message from?” He asks after a few moments, and he pretends his throat is not dry.

“Another student.”

Maul has never had the luxury of pretending he is at all… special to his master. He’s never had any illusions that he’s anything more than another piece to the puzzle.

But old habits die hard, and even if he will never admit it, it stings. People like him don’t get to decide they’re anything more than a particularly interesting pawn, and yet… yet he wants to, more than anything.

It simply stings, a little.

“I see,” he grounds out between clenched teeth.

The child nods, once, decidedly, and turns to leave. They’re a few steps away when they turn to speak again.

“I know more than anyone, perhaps, the cruelty of our master. Keep that in mind.”

Maul’s first reaction is simply to scream, You do not know!

He pushes down this impulse. It’s stupid, needless, immature and yet his very skin crawls at the mere thought, at the suggestion his suffering, his pain, is discredited.

And he swallows his pride, swallows his barbs, his immaturity, and realizes what this child means.

It’s an olive branch. It’s a kindness.

He says nothing, and the child leaves.

So does he.

Chapter Text

The first time Owen Lars meets Anakin Skywalker, he is twelve, and the latter is nine, or so he believes. Of course, he will never learn any better. He will have his suspicions, as will anyone else who has the chance to interact with the child in any more than a cursory conversation, but he will never approach Ani directly.

(One day, he will ask their mother. She will smile, turn away, and say, “Some things don’t need to be questioned.”

Which will, of course, answer nothing and yet everything.)

The Skywalkers’ impromptu freedom is the talk of their small community. No one has seen anything like it, and Owen, for all his youth, can see the way it bristles at the slavers. So can his father.

For their newfound pride, newfound independence, newfound freedom, the Skywalkers keep their heads down. It rankles at Owen, the first time they meet, the need for any humility at all. But he knows, just as any Tatooine native knows, just as anyone with sense knows, that it is a need all the same.

Cliegg Lars offers the mother and son a safe place to stay for as long as they need. Owen will tease his father for years that it was solely a way to get closer to his future wife. Cliegg will smile ruefully, but won’t deny anything; Shmi, for her part, will only ever click her tongue in teasing.

A twelve year old Owen finds Ani a strange little thing. He doesn’t act like any child Owen has met, or any child at all, and as such he’s not really sure what to do with him.

So this is what he does: he ignores him, for some time. He tries to tease, because Owen has and always will have a sharp tongue and a lack of care for whoever may be at its end. This doesn’t work, because Ani seems more amused by it than anything else, if in the way that one might be amused by a small animal doing its best to seem menacing.

Safe to say: he quickly gives this up.

After that, he switches to a half-hearted attempt to befriend this strange child who lurks around the house and has a tendency to disappear into the desert for days at a time. Their mother doesn't seem concerned, so he's not either, even if from the moment he was old enough to understand and likely before he has been told, over and over, that there is nothing more dangerous than the desert.

He tries to follow Ani only once. He creeps behind him for a little ways, bitter at how this little kid seems so at ease in the terrain, at how this child seems like he's never been built for anywhere else. As if he could melt into the desert if Owen lets his eyes stray for even a second.

He hides behind a nearby rock when Ani comes to a stop. He squints to watch as Ani kneels in the sand, and he realizes quickly Ani is uncovering something buried.

He can't tell what it is at first. Some sort of machinery piece, he thinks. And then Ani presses it, and red light ignites.

Owen knows of legends, and there is nothing more mystical, more magical than Jedi. Owen has never seen one; he is at that age, the time in his life in which he begins to question the stories he has been told. He has, on occasion, wondered if things such as Jedi exist, and if so, why they do not come to Tatooine. For Jedi are helpers, and Tatooine needs help as much as anywhere.

Ani is a Jedi, he decides. Owen does not know much, not past stories of magic and blades of light.

He watches red light reflect off his younger brother's face, watches his features twist into something else, something older, something nonhuman, and he thinks of old legends of hidden, true faces.

He fears his brother, in this moment. He will never stop fearing him, not truly. He will watch his face change, out of the corner of his eye, when he thinks no one is watching. He will watch him become something else. Something dark. Something powerful. Something that he has always been and always will be, even if they choose not to recognize. It bubbles under the surface, constantly, like a pot about to boil over.

And yet, he feels something else as well, in this moment. Recognition, perhaps. Because this is his brother. Not the child, not even the human.

Because he has his answers.

He watches as Ani turns off the sword and sets it back down in the sand, watches as he covers it back up until it's buried again. Like it was never there at all. Owen could almost convince himself he never saw any of it at all.

But he can't, and he wouldn't try. Instead, he simply watches Ani walk past his hiding spot and tries to convince himself there's no way he knows he's there. Instead, he simply waits there longer than he probably needs to, trying to convince himself that it's alright, that nothing has changed when so much has.

Because it's not simply learning of this hidden thing, it's not something that is confined to the desert, much as he wants to believe it.

He will never stop fearing his brother.

When he ducks back into the homestead for dinner, when he settles at the table alongside their parents, Ani's eye catches him.

Owen knows then, that it was a test. That Ani wants to know, now, what he will say, if he will say anything at all.

Tatooine trades in secrets, and Owen keeps his. His brother has a sword of light buried in the desert, and it is red. His brother is a Jedi, or so Owen believes, and he keeps his secrets.

His brother is something else, something inhuman, something other, and Owen keeps his secrets.

Chapter Text

Nineteen standard years ago, Shmi wandered into the dunes ready to die and returned with a screaming little thing that would not let her. Nineteen standard years ago, she laid in the sand and thought to herself that this must be dying, this must be what it feels like.

And then she didn’t.

Instead, she returned with tracks down her dirty face from tears she had never before let herself shed for lack of water and a small, squirming child who should not exist. Who could not exist.

She returned to whispers and wide berths from her fellow slaves, rumors about how she had survived and why she would return. Of course, they all knew there was no other choice. They all had to return, or die trying. Or return to die.

And she would not die.

She returned to newfound determination and newfound fear that sent ice running up and down her back. She hid when she could and worked when she couldn’t with a wriggling baby in a sling on her chest.

She named him Anakin, but this was very quickly replaced by Ani. Ani, please stop chewing your mama’s hair. Ani, don’t eat that. Ani, it’s time for bed, sweetheart.

She thought there had never been anything more beautiful to cross this planet’s surface than her son. And perhaps this was simply the hubris of mothers across the galaxy, but still, she thinks it to be true now and forever.

And she ignored the whispers of what was to come. Because no matter how much she wanted to deny it when it came, the change was not all at once. Because as much as she wanted to ignore it, there were so many signs.

She loved and loves Ani as much as a mother can love a son, as much as a planet can love a sun, as much as Daedalus can love Icarus.

Her son was, is magic. Perhaps this is to be expected when her son comes from the desert, when he comes from no man. For she does not lie.

Her son is not human, or not entirely. He is something else, something special. Something that brings about whispers of Tatooine folklore she’s long forgotten, something that meant she was not at all surprised when suddenly there were Jedi, real Jedi, in her home.

Something that means her son scares her, sometimes, after the change. Something that means part of her is not surprised, when she sees smoke and destruction and a mask seared into her mind even if she never sees it, not really. Not in truth; never in truth. She does not allow it.

The night after she had her dream, she left Ani (not her Ani, her instincts whisper, but he is, as much as any Ani, as much as her boy can be in any universe, in any time) and snuck away to the outskirts of Mos Espa.

There she met an old woman who took work-scored hands in wrinkled, age-spotted ones, who told her what she needed to know.

She told her what she already knew: that her boy-- who was no longer a boy, but who was always her boy-- was special, different, that he had changed, that he was hers as much as the universe's. That he was hers, and not, and no moreso than he had ever been.

She told her what she didn't: that futures are always changing, always shifting, and time is not as static as she had been taught. That what she had seen was true, was real, and yet not, because it had and had not happened in every universe and none.

She left with her mouth filled with the bitter taste of the old woman's tea and her heart and mind filled with many thoughts and the only one she'd ever had since she held a squirming little baby in her arms for the first time.

She returned to her boy and did not see reflections of a dark mask in his face. She saw, instead, tired, too old eyes for a too young face. She saw there kindness and cruelty and violence and wisdom and foolishness.

She saw someone she would love, no matter the weight of his sins. She saw her own failures, in loving someone who had done so much wrong.

She saw her baby boy. And so many years later, she sees the same.

Chapter Text

Owen is no stranger to his brother being… odd, for lack of a better word. He’s known since they’d met, since he’d first seen him.

It’s Jedi magic, or so he calls it, as much as Ani hates it when he calls it that. But that’s what it is, whether or not Ani wants to admit it, and even if he finds it odd he would never begrudge him for it.

Which is not to say he’s never… frightened of it. He is. Often, even. His brother is not human, or not entirely, and it’s something he doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to. From the moment they’d met, Ani had never acted like a normal child, or any child at all. Owen has his doubts he ever was, much as their mother wants to believe it.

All this to say, it’s far, far too late for guests, both the suns disappeared behind the horizon, and there’s a Zabrak at their door.

Owen does not have the same capacity for Jedi magics his brother does, or any capacity at all, but that doesn’t stop him from feeling the pressure of this man’s strength.

It’s so very unlike Ani’s, he thinks. Ani is strong, certainly stronger than this man, but there are sharp edges here he’s never sensed in his brother. He gets the sense Ani tries to keep himself under wraps, keeps himself tightly coiled, and that is not present here.

He gets the sense this man could not hold a candle to his brother, but that is precisely why he immediately feels more afraid.

And this is why he abruptly turns and says to the man, “I’ll get him.”

He knows, somehow, maybe simply because this is distinctly Jedi (or not, if Ani is to be believed), that the Zabrak is here for Ani.

Owen must be correct, because Ani appears to have sensed him. He’s already on his way before Owen can even call him.

He immediately brushes past Owen and out the door to join the Zabrak, and if his tongue weren’t quite so heavy in his mouth Owen would certainly complain about it. As it is, he simply keeps out of the way and resigns himself to sitting at the kitchen table until the two are done.

The two settle on the low wall outside the home. If it were anyone else, Owen would worry about two people alone in the middle of the Tatooine desert, but he knows better than that.

Their voices are quiet between them, and he would have no hopes even without the winds that he would be able to hear them. Instead, he simply waits.

“You didn’t need to stay up,” Ani tells him when he reenters. Owen can’t entirely read the expression on his face. He doubts if he’ll ever be able to.

He shrugs. “I did.”

Ani scowls at that, but he doesn’t say anything, just settles across from Owen at the table.

They stay quiet for a long moment. Owen notes the way the moonlight travels across the space between them until Ani is coated in it. He turns his head, and the image in front of him flickers, just for a moment, until his brother looks like something else, something different, something large and dark and inhuman. He shivers, suddenly cold, and looks away.

“Who was that?” He asks, to change the subject.

It’s Ani’s turn to shrug. “Someone who wanted my help.”

Owen clicks his tongue. That could mean any number of things, but mostly that Ani doesn’t want to say any more, and he knows better than to stick his nose where it’s not wanted.

“Did you give it?” He asks instead. That’s all that really matters, in the end.

Ani hums. “I did. If he takes it remains to be seen.”

“I imagine he did in some way, if he sought you out.”

There’s a huff, and Owen suddenly gets the sense his brother is far older than his teenage years. He feels that way sometimes, that Ani has lived so much longer than him, that he’s seen so much more, and it leaves him feeling surprisingly… small.

“I suppose you’re right,” Ani says, which has Owen blinking. Ani is usually so bullheaded that it catches him off guard, and in a less serious conversation he knows he would be teasing him for it, but he can’t quite muster the energy.

“I am glad he sought me out,” Ani continues. “I didn’t expect it, as much as I’d hoped.”

“You were expecting him for a while, then?” Owen asks, trying to read between the lines.

“No, not expecting. Just waiting.”

Owen resists the urge to say, Semantics, but he knows what Ani means. He hums.

They stay at the table for a while longer before Owen finally leaves, right as the suns start to rise. There’s work to be done, and it doesn’t wait for Jedi business.

Chapter Text

Sheev Palpatine has never been a man who has struggled with the doctrine of the Sith. From the moment his eyes were first opened by Plagueis, so many years ago, he has warmly, lovingly embraced the new world he'd been cast into.

(Or at least this is what he tells himself. Perhaps he really, truly, after all this time, does not remember the struggle, the pain, the torture of what it means to become a Sith.)

(Perhaps it doesn't matter. Perhaps, one way or another, it is to remember to cast it onto another, to envelope them, just the same, in apprenticeship.)

That is the way of the Sith. To be, all at once, the student and the master, the tortured and the torturer, the unmade and the unmaker.

And Palpatine excels.

And, yet, his eyes have always been bigger than his stomach. More often than not, he has not considered this any sort of grand misfortune. Want, greed, hunger, after all, leads to action. Leads to triumph.

But it’s not enough. Nothing could ever be enough. When he was little, his sister used to say he was a black hole.

He never saw why it should be a negative. He would swallow the galaxy.

He was Saturn, consuming the universe.

There’s someone in his office. He can sense it.

It’s more out of curiosity, than anything, that he signals his guards to allow him entrance alone. The sheer idea surprises and amuses him in equal measure.

He slides his lightsaber into his hand, hiding it in the folds of his robes. He doubts he’ll need it, but he hasn’t gotten this far by taking his chances.

The door slides open.

There’s a boy seated in his chair behind his desk. A boy, not a man, for he can’t be more than twenty. He’s not looking at Palpatine, his eyes instead fixed on the view of Coruscant skies through the large windows. His body betrays him; every muscle is tensed, coiled like a snake ready to strike. Palpatine’s lips curl in amusement.

“To whom do I owe the pleasure?” He asks, voice falsely jovial.

The boy looks to him, then. Their eyes lock. And ah. He knows.

He remembers from so many years ago, when Maul had returned a failure. He remembers the message he'd relayed, of another student who promised his death.

He remembers being bemused, more than anything, and yet vaguely unsettled. For he did not remember another student.

Palpatine is and has always been, more than anything, sure of himself. And so he pushed aside any hesitance, any instinct he’d long since stopped listening to that said it was worth being cautious.

And, now he knows: this boy is the student.

Sheev Palpatine is a man of action, yes, but more than to anything he is a man of inaction. Of planning, of constructing delicate structure upon delicate structure of pawns, of movable pieces on the chessboard of the galaxy.

And as such, he is displeased, more than anything, when these pieces are moved by his opponents and not by his own hand.

He’d been angry, when Maul had vanished. Angry, and yet almost impressed. He hadn’t thought his student had had the fortitude to disobey him so brazenly. He’d been confident, of course, that he’d find him, punish him.

And then he hadn’t.

His mind had, of course, drifted to the student. He’d sent people, of course. He had never found anyone, despite it all. A few disappeared; he’d never known if they’d been snuffed out, or if it was simply coincidence.

He supposes he should find himself lucky his prey came to him.

“You’ve come to challenge me,” Palpatine says. It’s not a question. Such is the way of all of the Sith.

“Not challenge,” the boy counters. “Extinguish.”

Palpatine has never been the type to find an interest in the idea of anything as nebulous as retribution, the type to find himself thinking of such things as the justice of the universe. He knows damn well the universe isn’t punishing a soul.

And yet he finds himself thinking of it now, just for a moment, as the boy brandishes a red lightsaber. Some long-numbed prey drive in his brain shutters to life, and he finds himself shivering before he can suppress it.

That, more than anything, is what incenses him. Not that this boy has been trained by someone who’s not him, who’s been taught by an imposter. Not that this boy has interrupted him, thought himself worthy of challenging him. Not that this boy–– this boy, because he’s still a child–– knows who, knows what he is when no one should.

No. It’s his basest instinct. It’s that somewhere, some impulse he can’t control, screams that this child is a threat worth taking seriously.

He ignites his own saber. The red reflects off the boy’s eyes, and Palpatine can’t tell what red is reflection and what is his own.

The boy’s stance is practiced, laced with intentionality, strong. Palpatine knows damn well there is no other Sith. And so it unsettles him, to know that this boy must have learned somewhere. He doesn’t let it show.

He throws himself at the enemy.

Palpatine's strengths lay in his mind, in his ability to plan, to scheme. That does not mean he’s not proficient in combat.

And yet. The boy doesn’t seem to struggle. Their sabers clash, a horrible, screeching noise in the relative quiet of the office.

Palpatine finds himself wishing he hadn't sent away his guards.

All in all, it does not take long. The boy is younger, stronger–– somehow, somehow, stronger.

Palpatine grits his teeth, bones practically creaking with the effort it takes to ward off his attacker. The boy reaches, fingers twisting, and a hand is pulled off his saber.

Palpatine grunts, reaching, grabbing, scrabbling at the Force like a man clutching for a handhold, grasping at anything he can get.

Who is this boy?

Anger is the fuel of the Dark side; hatred is his master. He pulls at it, twists at it, throws it back in this usurper child's face. The boy gasps, stumbling back a few steps, and Palpatine grins, a ghastly, terribly thing.

And then the air roils. It makes him feel sick. It makes him feel strong.

It's the boy's. The boy's strength. The boy's power.

“Who are you?” Palpatine finally asks, half in horror, half in fascination. “Who taught you?”

The boy smiles, then. For the second time, it sends long-forgotten fear up Palpatine’s spine.

“You did.”

And Palpatine loses, then. His attention is wrested, for a moment, his mind racing with the need to comprehend, to understand what it means, what it could ever mean, and that’s all the edge his opponent needs. For there’s no way for Palpatine to know, but the boy knows quite well how he fights, knows how to win.

Palpatine loses. His lightsaber is thrown from his hands, extinguishing and clattering against the far wall. He throws his hands out, the Force practically shaking in his hands with the effort he pushes into it to hold off his attacker. It doesn’t matter. The boy grunts in exertion, pushing back, and then it slips.

The saber plunges into Palpatine’s chest with a hiss and a gasp of pain and nothing more. His knees give out. He falls onto the tile of the office, staring up at his killer in shock more than anything.

For just a moment, in his eyes, the silhouette above him changes shape. His vision is already going blurry, darkness creeping in at the edges, but for a moment it all sharpens.

The face above him morphs to a mask, the desert-colored clothes morph to black. It’s someone else.

And Palpatine knows it’s his. Knows this other, knows this person-who-is-not, is his. He’s not sure why, or how–– maybe it’s just pain, just the delusions of a dying man. But he knows.
He was Saturn, consuming his son.

In the end, some part of him is glad. Some part of him rejoices. If he is to lose, if he is to die, then let it be by his student. Even if he doesn’t remember him. Even if this boy could just as soon be someone he has never seen before.

Such is the Sith. The master, killed by the student, let him continue the legacy.

(For there is no way he can know that this boy is no Sith, nor a Jedi either. There is no way he can know he has really, truly, lost, in every sense of the word.

And he has. And he dies.)

(Anakin–– Vader–– both, and neither–– extinguishes his lightsaber. The room goes dark. He turns his back on the body, turns to look, once again, out at the lights of Coruscant.

In the morning, the guards will find Palpatine’s body. Some will rejoice. Many more will mourn. They will wonder. Those who knew him–– truly, knew him, few as they were–– will fear.

In the morning, he’ll return home. To Tatooine. To his mother and brother. To the familiar twin suns.

In the morning, the galaxy will change. Less than it would have, otherwise, and yet: it will.)