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Shmi is pregnant again. She knows they are whispering behind her back, saying things about the tall handsome man who took her son away. Nothing she says can convince them he didn't touch her during the time he stayed in her house. When she's alone, she almost smiles at the thought. His face had been comely and his voice gentle, and even now she cannot hate him, even though the house feels empty without her golden boy. Shmi can't bring herself to change a thing in Anakin's room, not even pick up the pliers he left on the floor. The droid he built sits on the bed, and she can't bring herself to put him on and hear his voice, the voice of her son's creation. Every heartbeat pains her when she thinks of her son, somewhere in the galaxy, far far away.
There is now another heartbeat below her own. It's greedy, vigorous, yearns for life just the same as her Ani. And just like him, this one doesn't have a father. She doesn't ask how, she didn't ask before. The day Ani left, she felt life pouring out of her. Now it's pouring back in, and she has no choice. Watto makes her work just as hard with her growing belly, and her back is killing her, and she is trying not to imagine a stranger in Ani's room, sleeping on Ani's bed, playing with Ani's things, talking to Ani's droid. This child is not welcome.
~*~
Shmi looks at the baby, her perfect wrinkled face, her inquisitive dark eyes. She tries to will herself to love her, for the girl has no one else. But in truth, the girl doesn't have Shmi either. She has given a part of her body for the girl to become a living thing, but most of the baby just came from somewhere. Wearily Shmi touches the baby's pink cheek. She closes her eyes and imagines herself holding baby Ani, tries to remember all the love she felt when she cradled him in her arms. She opens her eyes again and only sees an impostor.
When Watto wants to sell the baby, she doesn't protest. She doesn't want to know where she's going, she is not hers, was never hers truly like Anakin was. She thinks of her son and how he's doing. The tall handsome man is teaching him to be a Jedi, to protect all that is good in this world. And she knows he's dreaming of even more, of seeing all the planets in all the systems in all the galaxies. He has the best life she could ever have given him. So, she hopes, will his little sister. The night after the baby girl has been taken away, Shmi can't sleep. She goes to Ani's room, picks the pliers from the floor and puts them on the desk. She lays down on his bed, too short for her, and curls into a ball. In the morning, she takes the wires and connects them like Ani showed her. ”Good morning, mother,” the droid says. ”How may I assist you?”
~*~
The baby is taken in by an arms trader and her engineer husband. Childless for too many years, they had given up hope altogether. The little girl knows nothing of her true parentage, until one night her daddy comes home drunk from the podraces and tells her maybe she should take up podracing since it seems to be in her family. He's heard rumours her mother was also mother to Anakin Skywalker, the human winner of the Boonta Eve Classic. ”You know my mother?” the girl asks, the word clumsy on her tongue, because until today Mummy has been her only mother. Daddy says nothing, and the girl looks at his unfocused eyes and asks: ”Why did she give me away?” He shakes his head. ”Died. Crazy. Didn't care. Better not to ask.” And the girl learns, for many years, not to ask.
Years go by and Daddy drinks more and more. Daddy argues with Mummy, who is away a lot. She's doing something important in the arms trade business, and there's a permanent wrinkle on her forehead now. Daddy is not engineering anymore, he only has his booze and the races, but he's no longer telling the girl to become a podracer. Mummy wants her to have a respectable career. The girl herself is sick of the sands of Tatooine. She dreams of flying away already, of seeing a thousand and one planets. She looks up to the sky and wonders if her brother is somewhere out there, winning podraces and covering his name is glory. There is a war, but Tatooine is remote. Mummy's business does well, that the girl knows. What she doesn't know is that her brother is the one to decide the outcome of the conflict, and to stand at the Emperor's side when the new Empire rises. And she doesn't know that she has a nephew down on Tatooine, only a thousand miles away.
Her Mommy has contacts in the army, and when she is eighteen she leaves Tatooine to attend an Imperial Academy to become a pilot. She hears stories of the terrifying Darth Vader and dismisses them as nonsense. She concentrates on her studies, she's the best in her class. Then one day she is ready, and she flies a new model TIE fighter to bombard a civilian settlement hiding rebel fighters. She can't make herself shoot. She wonders what kind of a monster would bomb innocent women, men and children. The answer is the Empire, and she doesn't like it.
She takes a vacation and goes back on Tatooine. Her daddy has passed away and her mummy is aged. Mummy sees she's troubled, asks what's wrong. Not knowing what to say, she asks about her other mother. Mummy confirms what Daddy told her all those years ago: that she was bought from an orphanage, and she'd been sold there by a junk dealer named Watto, known in the podracing circles not only as a gambler but also as the man who lost little Ani Skywalker. The girl takes leave of her mummy, placing a kiss on her grey head. She says goodbye and means farewell.
~*~
She tracks down Watto, then the man who bought and married Watto's slave. Only she's dead now, been dead for almost fifteen years, and he's dead too. His son, named Owen Lars, shakes his head at her and tells her there aren't any Skywalkers on Tatooine anymore. His eyes are not friendly, so she bites her tongue and says nothing. She is not a Skywalker, never was, and her only mother is the imperial arms trader with grey hair and troubled eyes. The girl, now a woman, leaves the Lars farm. When she's about to go, a little boy, Lars's nephew, comes up to her and asks about her speeder. His eyes are innocent and kind, and she lets him ride it until his uncle tells her it's time to leave. She ruffles the boy's hair and says goodbye before she flies away.
The woman watches the twin suns settle on Tatooine and feels a pang of something close to regret. She has hated this planet and she has loved it, she has left it and now she will leave again. She finds a ship to take her to a faraway planet, where she finds another ship, where she again finds another ship, until she's on the moon that the Empire was bombarding now a year ago already. She doesn't give up her search until she has located the rebels. She tells them everything she knows, gives them all she has. It feels like an unspoken voice is telling her she's come to the right place.
She feels the same when she first sits down in the cockpit of an x-wing. She's coming home. She takes all the foolhardiest missions because she wants to make amends. Only when her ship crashes and she barely survives and lies in the rebel hospital on an obscure planet she realises she has made herself a life. It's because there's always someone sitting by her bedside, more often than not a man with long brown hair and the sweetest dimples. He is a pilot too, and together they fly on a score of missions. ”Where you fly, I will always have your back,” he says. ”And I will always have yours,” she says and kisses him on the nose. They become elite, and so they are asked on a top secret mission to steal the plans of the Death Star.
Against all odds they complete the mission, but they are the only survivors. She needs time. It's not just the death of her companions, or her own near-death, it's her brush with the man known as Darth Vader. She never even saw him, but she felt his presence and she knew he felt hers. She knows she will keep herself as far away from him as she can. She's hiding on a rainforest covered moon when the Death Star is destroyed. There she gives birth to a son who has his father's dimples. Only later she learns that the pilot who secured the victory was named Luke Skywalker, and he was from Tatooine.
~*~
She and her husband keep flying for the rebels' cause, and their son can pilot an x-wing almost as soon as he can walk and talk. When the Empire is defeated and Darth Vader brought down, she feels like she can rest. She goes to look for Luke and finds the boy who wanted to play with her speeder. He embraces her and calls her aunt, but she thinks he doesn't remember her. She meets her niece too, the Princess and leader of the rebellion. Her own son plays with Leia's son, and when she later has a girl, both Luke and Leia hold her, and together they wonder if the baby will grow up to look like the grandmother she shares with the Skywalkers. ”Never forget you're a Skywalker too,” Luke tells his aunt when she's leaving with the baby. ”And so is little Rey.” Luke's aunt, the hero pilot, just shakes her head. ”Don't call me that. I was never a Skywalker, and my children have their father's name.” Luke nods. ”We are all much grateful to you, Aunt. Your son will be a great pilot like his parents. But your daughter – she might not be Skywalker by name, but she has our blood. She may be a Jedi one day, if you permit.”
Rey's mother is restless. She realizes she misses the sands of Tatooine, and the twin moons. ”You've done your part, and more,” says Leia, and she and her husband are dismissed from the fleet. They bring their kids up on Tatooine, fixing old ships and selling parts, try to forget the war that's still going on. Their son misses the starships, learns to fly anything he can get his hands on, and tells his little sister wild stories about the wars their parents fought. Little Rey bathes in the sand and builds castles and has a knack with machines and tools. Her parents never speak of the war, and her brother's stories are too wild to be true. There is more than ten years between the siblings, but they love each other. Rey's brother teaches her to fly, and her chortling laugh rings all over the desert.
Even though Rey's parents are no longer involved in the war, they hear rumours. The day Rey's mother gets the news about the fall of Ben Solo, her niece's son, she can't sit still for longer than half a minute. Ben had played with her son, had even dutifully kissed little Rey's cheek when they were introduced. Now he is out there, and no one knows what has come of him. Rey's mother leaves her family and flies to meet Leia, but she can hardly get much out of her devastated niece. Her nephew is gone. But there are others who have heard things. The more stories Rey's mother hears, the more troubled she grows. They say Ben, now styling himself Kylo Ren, is bent on destroying the Jedi. Rey's mother's heart skips a beat as she recalls Luke's words. She may be a Jedi one day, if you permit. Well, she will not permit it, and she will hide Rey so her cousin's son will never find and destroy her.
Rey's mother flies back to Tatooine. She takes her husband and her children and flees. The children sleep in murky freight ships while their parents sit and watch them sleep. They decide to look for a remote planet, as similar to Tatooine as possible. No reason to upset little Rey any more than they must. She hasn't taken the voyage well.
Jakku is the perfect solution. It's a periphery, a desert like Tatooine, and even less known. Rey's family settles down with the little they have. They settle in a wrecked imperial walker. Rey's mother remembers learning how to pilot one in the Imperial Academy. They struggle to get by day to day, and they are much indebted to their kind neighbour, a junk dealer named Unkar Plutt. They never tell anyone where they came from. ”It's top secret,” Rey's mother tells the little girl, and she nods, her brown eyes all seriousness. Her brother is forbidden from telling her stories about the rebellion and the Skywalkers. ”Don't believe a word your brother says,” Rey's mother tells her. ”He has a wild imagination. Those are all just myths.” Maybe, just maybe, Rey is young enough that she can forget life was ever anything else, that her family was once something else.
~*~
The war sweeps over the galaxy when Rey is not even six. The resistance is failing, the First Order is rising. One day Rey's father turns down a deal from Plutt. ”I just can't sit here anymore, doing nothing, when they destroy all we fought for. I am going.” Rey's mother feels a stab in her heart, and all the guilt she's pushed away all these years is flooding back to her. The unspoken voice is stirring again. ”I guess I can't stop you,” she says to her husband. Ever since she recovered from her fall as an amateur pilot, they've always been together. ”I want to go too,” says their son. ”You are not going,” says the mother. ”Mother, I am almost twenty. I can fly anything. I know what we are up against. I want to fight.” And in his eyes, she sees he's lost to her, so she nods and lets him go. As a goodbye gift the boy gives his crying sister a doll of a rebel fighter in his orange jumpsuit. ”Remember me, little Rey,” he says and kisses her tangled hair.
Rey's mother doesn't think the doll is appropriate and bids Rey to hide it. Even though it's dangerous, she can't bear thinking of actually throwing the doll away. The doll was made by her son for her daughter, and when she looks at it, she thinks of her son and and her husband fighting out there in their orange jumpsuits. She hopes they have each other's back, and prays they'll be back soon. She has to work twice as hard now that her husband and her son are gone. She teaches her daughter what little she has learnt about scavenging.
In six months' time her husband returns, and her heart breaks as soon as their eyes meet. Their son is gone. She can't bring herself to tell Rey, who sleeps with her rebel pilot doll tucked safely under her arm. Rey knows something is wrong, and her cheerful spirits are dampened and she cries at night. She asks her father when is her brother coming back. He says nothing, but when Rey is asleep he tells his wife. ”The war could spread to Jakku. I have to go back, to push them away before they reach here. Every pilot counts.” His eyes linger on hers and she looks away. Where you fly, I will always have your back, she thinks. She is tortured by nightmares of the First Order taking over Jakku, of killing Rey, or taking her to her cousin turned murderer. She doesn't have a choice, really.
They leave Rey with Unkar Plutt. There is no one else. He is not the nicest of men, but he is fair. He swears to look after her, and she wails hysterically. ”No, don't leave,” she screams at her parents. Her father embraces her and tells her to be brave, and remember what they told her. Her mother kisses her hair. ”Rey, look at me,” she says, and her heart breaks for the second time when she says it. ”Rey, I'll be back for you, I promise.”
They fly away and Unkar Plutt grips Rey's little hand when she tries to run after the spaceship. ”No,” cries the girl. ”No, come back!”
Rey sleeps alone in the hull of the at-at they called home, her pilot doll safely in her arms. When she wakes up, her pillow is wet with tears. Eventually, her hunger draws her out of her lair. She tucks her little pilot into bed and kisses his brow. ”I'll be back, I promise,” she whispers. She goes to find Unkar Plutt, who sends her to gather scrap metal. When the sun sets on Jakku, she comes back to her doll and shares her meal with him. Before she goes to sleep, she carefully scrapes a line on the metal wall. She has waited for one day.