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Obi-wan didn’t realise what the gestures meant at first. Obi-wan had spent most of his time as a slave or using slave routes in or near Mandalorian space, on the opposite side of Hutt Space and the galaxy from Tatooine. Methods of signaling and asking for safety were different.
No one had told Obi-wan what Anakin left behind, and Obi-wan knew better than to pry. Even for freeborn, planets under Hutt control were vicious. Obi-wan thought that his master would have told him if Anakin was a slave.
That was his mistake, apparently.
()
Obi-wan brewed a pot of shig, and set it on the counter between the two stools. Anakin was sulking, tapping at his datapad. Obi-wan glanced over the text on the screen, then paused, frowning. “That’s not Huttese.”
The characters were Huttese, but the words . . .
Anakin startled, reflexively hitting the off switch to blank out the screen. Obi-wan considered that as he poured the shig for both of them, turning a blind eye to Anakin’s fidgeting. The sharp citrusy smell of behot rose with the steam.
Anakin took the mug when Obiwan offered it to him, and Obi-wan observed as Anakin relaxed a little as he held the mug close. Tea that Obi-wan made always had that effect on him - though Obi-wan had seen that Anakin avoided the tea served in the cafeteria.
“Anakin,” Obi-wan said slowly as he formulated his question. He had learned the codes for when he was trapped, but he had never needed to make use of them himself. He was rarely in a position where he had the ability to offer a subtle route to freedom. “Have you ever been offered a name and a soul?”
Anakin startled, shig sloshing over the rim of his mug and onto his hand, sending him hissing as he dropped the mug the short distance to the table to blow at the red skin of his hand.
Obi-wan hissed in sympathy. He encouraged Anakin to hop off the stool and brought him over to the sink. Obi-wan wet one of their dish towels with cold water, ignoring Anakin’s reflexive flinch at the use of the water, and carefully wrapped the towel around Anakin’s hand.
“There, how’s that?” Obi-wan asked.
“You didn’t have to use water,” Anakin said, avoiding his gaze. “I would have been fine, it wasn’t that hot.”
“We have the water to do so, and I wanted to,” Obi-wan said. He crouched down in front of Anakin. “So. A name and a soul.”
Anakin fidgeted with the wet dish towel, wrapping and unwrapping the free end around his wrist.
“Mom said people who offer that are dangerous,” Anakin said finally. “Safer for kids usually, but not always. Some of them will help free a kid who asks for no cost. Some of them will take you with them - if you agree to become one of them.”
“LIke the Jedi have done with you?” Obi-wan asked softly.
Anakin didn’t look up. “Some of them will take you, and you’ll be even worse off. It’s a gamble. But sometimes you get lucky.”
“Do you think,” Obi-wan said, “that you got lucky?”
Anakin wrapped and unwrapped the dish towel around his wrist. He said, “I haven’t decided yet.”
Obi-wan paused. Anakin had spoken of his mother before, but Ovi-wan had tried to keep from asking too many questions. But if Anakin knew how to assess someone offering him ”a name and a soul” . . .
“Is your mom safe?”
“No.”
()
“Are you saying,” Obi-wan said, “that because my Padawan is a human, his culture does not count?”
“Saying that we are not,” Yoda said. “But attached, young Skywalker is. Better for him a clean break would be.”
“A clean break? You mean cutting him off from the traditions of his planet of origin?” Obi-wan asked. “What’s next, will you forbid Knight Unduli from wearing her head coverings? Will you force Master Mundi to divorce his wives?”
“Knight Kenobi,” Mace Windu said.
Obi-wan glared at the council. “You cannot pick and choose when to honor the rights you give to us, or they are not rights. Choose.”
“Alright,” Mace Windu said. “You have argued your point well. You may take your padawan to his home planet to participate in his traditional ceremonies.”
“Thank you,” Obi-wan said. He bowed to the council and swept out of the room after he had been dismissed.
()
“Tell me about them?” Anakin asked as they settled into their compartment of the transport that would be taking them the first stretch of the way. “How do you know the words? The people?”
Obi-wan pulled the sheet over the last corner of the bed, and tugged to remove the wrinkles.
“A name and a soul. Gai bal manda,” Obi-wan said as he shook out the top sheet. “It’s the adoption ritual for Mandalorians - the one who is to be adopted is given a name and soul.”
“Does that mean they think you don’t have a soul if you're not Mandalorian?” Anakin asked.
“Some of them do,” Obi-wan said. “It depends on the philosophy they follow. Some Mandalorians see only other Mando’ade as having souls. Others do believe that all sentient life has souls, and Mando’ade are distinguished by their connection to the Manda - the collective soul of the Mandalorian people.”
“I don’t want to be Mandalorian then,” Anakin said. “I’m already a person. And my name is Anakin.”
“You don’t have to be a Mandalorian,” Obi-wan told Anakin as he threw the blanket over the sheet. “You don’t need to be a Jedi either, if it doesn’t suit you.” Obi-wan was quiet for a moment. “I spent most of my years as a padawan in and around Mandalorian space. They’re a warrior people and they can be harsh, but . . . I found many aspects of their culture comforting.”
Anakin said, “I told Mom I’d become a Jedi. I said I’d go back and free the slaves.”
Obi-wan sighed, smoothing his hands over his sheets. “You might not be able to do that as a Jedi,” he said. Then he frowned and turned to look at Anakin. “Anakin - did anyone actually tell you what Jedi do? Or go over your rights as a padawan?”
Anakin, standing awkwardly in the doorway where he wouldn’t get in Obi-wan’s way as Obi-wan made his bed, hunched his shoulders and crossed his arms, looking away from Obi-wan. “. . . no.”
“Hmm. Alright, come sit down. Let me see if I can connect to the Holonet to download the padawan’s handbook while we’re still on planet.”
()
Anakin trailed unhappily behind Obi-wan.
Obi-wan had checked with Anakin on his people’s views on buying slaves’ freedom. The Order had dubious jurisdiction on Tatooine, and after Obi-wan had heard Anakin’s account of what Qui-gon had done on Naboo - and promptly rushed Anakin to the Hall of Healing with a small explosives warning - Obi-wan decided that it would be wrong to not give Shmi a choice in how she wanted to be freed when he could make the money to buy her.
(Anakin hadn’t known what Qui-gon Jinn did with the controller for his slave chip.
Obi-wan wasn’t surprised or even really disappointed in his master. This was exactly the kind of thing he might forget about.
Qui-gon Jinn was an amazing negotiator, and brilliant at following the will of the Force. He was not skilled at remembering the smaller details of interpersonal interactions that turned out to be so important.)
Anakin had made a face at the question. He’d explained that buying freedom was something that outlanders did. Obi-wan had nodded slowly and slotted that new knowledge into his understanding of Anakin.
And then - because there were a limited number of ways to make money quickly, and Obi-wan couldn’t use the Order’s resources for this - Obi-wan headed off to find the gamblers on the ship, with Anakin in tow so he could learn how Jedi gambled.
()
The first transport took them to Naboo. Obi-wan had amassed a fair amount of credits gambling on the ship, under Anakin’s incredulous gaze. He’d lost just often and irregularly enough that his opponents never accused him of cheating, and never grew too disgruntled with him.
After quiet consultation with Anakin, Obi-wan bought a massive tank he had filled with water, a number of human-safe ration packs, and berths and cargo space on a ship headed along the Triellus Trade Route towards the Arkanis sector. With the remainder of the credits, Obi-wan took Anakin to a scrap yard and had Anakin pick out working parts that would be valuable on Tatooine.
“Are we going to see Padme?” Anakin asked as he fiddled with one of the parts, watching Obi-wan fit another part, newly cleaned, back together. “Since we’re on Naboo right now.”
“We can ask,” Obi-wan said. “She might not have time for us - Naboo’s still recovering from the blockade, and they’re still working out how to integrate with the Gungans.”
“Chancellor Palpatine says that he’s worried about that. He said that he’s worried about what will happen if they integrate and grow dependent on the Gungans, and then they go to war again and they can’t make everything they need.”
“While that is a reasonable worry, it is not the Chancellor’s decision to make,” Obi-wan said. “Beyond that, if the Naboo don’t integrate at least somewhat with the Gungans, how will they ever stop fighting? The Gungans are rightfully angry at the Naboo for colonizing their planet and taking their land. And do the Gungans not deserve representation in the Senate?”
“Wait - the Gungans are like the Tuskens?” Anakin asked.
“I don’t know enough about Tatooine to say, but if the Tuskens are the native people of Tatooine - those who were there first - then yes.”
“Oh.” Anakin frowned down at the part in his hands. “That’s not fair. If the Gungans were here first, then they should be the ones with the vote in the Senate. Why didn’t Chancellor Palpatine tell me that?”
“Well, the Chancellor is Nubian, remember? There’s been fighting between the Naboo and the Gungans in his lifetime, and he likely remembers that fighting and doesn’t like the Gungans very much, which colored his perception of them when he talked to you about them.”
“That’s not fair,” Anakin repeated.
“Everyone has biases,” Obi-wan said.
They did send a message to the queen, but she didn’t have time to meet them before their transport left.
()
The transport dropped them off on Tatooine without any trouble.
Obi-wan grimaced at the bright suns overhead and slathered even more sunscreen on before he pulled the brim of his hat low and started pushing the hovering water tank after Anakin.
They made their way to the slave quarters without any unexpected trouble.
“Ani?” someone called, and Obi-wan saw the way Anakin lit up as he turned.
“Kitster!” Anakin yelled, and he ran full tilt at the other youngling. They slammed into each other, babbling in some language Obi-wan couldn’t understand.
Obi-wan paused, smiling a little as he watched them. He caught the word Jedi in the babbling and - Anakin turned to him. Anakin turned to Obi-wan, and perhaps it shouldn’t have been significant, but Obi-wan felt a current of the Force pressing close, paying attention.
“Kitster, this is Obi-wan. Obi-wan, this is my brother Kitster.”
“Oh!” Obi-wan turned to consider their things. “Do you think we have enough for him as well?”
Anakin beamed.
()
Kitster and Anakin led Obi-wan to Shmi’s house, their heads bent together as they talked to each other.
Obi-wan continued behind them, pushing the water tank.
Shmi welcomed her sons home.
Shmi was able to pull together a meal for the four of them from what she had, and Obi-wan was glad that he’d thought to bring the ration packs, which helped greatly. Dinner was lively.
Anakin and Kitster left the table to go look at some droid Anakin had built, and Kitster had been working on since he left.
Obi-wan was left alone with Shmi
“You are not Qui-gon Jinn,” she said quietly. The old sonic hummed in her hand as she ran it over the dishes, cleaning them. “You are not the one I entrusted my child to.”
“Qui-gon died not long after he left here,” Obi-wan said. “He was my teacher. He asked me to look after Anakin.”
“Why have you brought him here?” Shmi set aside the clean bowl and reached for another dirty dish.
“We cannot free all slaves. I am a single man, not even of this planet. I do not know your people, I do not know their masters. I do not know what aid would help and what would harm. But it is my responsibility at this moment to care for Anakin, and I know that he will not be able to truly choose his path while you are in danger and there is something he can do about it. We have bought enough, I think, in water and parts to buy your freedom, if that is what you wish. Or, I can slip into your master’s dwelling and steal the controller for your chip. Or I can aid you in freeing yourself in any other manner you wish.”
“And that is your decision to make?” Shmi asked, setting the final dish aside, clean.
“It is what I can offer.”
Shmi turned and considered Obi-wan.
“I want Kitster out first,” she said finally. “Then we’ll see. Show me what you have brought to buy us.”
Obi-wan saw her determination. This was her line in the sand. She would fight him every way she knew how, for every inch, if he tried to go around her to free her first.
Obi-wan met her gaze and nodded.
()
Kitster’s freedom was easy to buy. His master had been considering selling him, and almost eagerly agreed to trade the water tank. Kitster was young, but he was unskilled. He was cheap.
Shmi was skilled - and Wato was still recovering from his losses gambling on the race that saw Anakin free.
They did not go to Wato - they did not have enough to buy Shmi.
Shmi asked, that next night as she combed her hair in preparation to redo her braids, “How long will you be staying?”
“We have a month before they will start to question us. We can stay longer, but if Anakin truly wants to become a Jedi, he needs to be at the temple with his peers. If Anakin intends to stay with you, I can likely extend my stay to six months.”
“I don’t want to be with my peers,” Anakin said grumpily as he poked at the deactivated C3PO’s code where he had it pulled up on his datapad. “They don’t like me and I don’t like them.”
“They’ll never like you if you don’t get to know them,” Obi-wan said, but his heart wasn’t in the placation. He remembered Bruck Chun - not his death, but the long, drawn out war of attrition between them before that. “If you truly cannot stand the groups you’ve been placed with, we can find other classes for you to attend. But I cannot be everything to you Anakin.”
“A month then,” Shmi said. She met Obi-wan’s gaze calmly and tilted her head ever so slightly in a faint nod. A strand of her dark hair fell across her face and Obi-wan had to blink a couple times before he could turn his attention back to the meditation he had settled down to do after they ate.
Anakin and Kitster were in bed when Obi-wan surfaced, but Shmi was waiting for him.
“Wato is sentimental,” she told him, offering him a cup of blue milk. “He allowed me to keep Anakin, even though Anakin could do little for the shop. Wato enjoys the idea of love, and thought himself so very magnanimous. With his losses after the podrace last year, he will be reluctant to sell me, even if you are willing to pay him more than I am worth. But if he thinks that we have fallen in love . . .”
Shmi’s eyes were dark in the dim night light, and they seemed endlessly deep. They were nothing like Satine’s eyes, except for the steady determination that underlay every action she took. Obi-wan had been allowed to follow her on her evening rounds, and he had seen how the people of the slave quarter looked to her, how they brought their problems to her for advice.
Obi-wan looked away first.
“Would he believe it of me?” he asked, taking the cup. “If the goal is to be convincing, usually the ages are the other way around.”
“Even better,” Shmi said. “You would not love me simply as another pretty young thing to be thrown away when I age - if you can sell the act.”
Obi-wan closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “I can sell it.”
()
Obi-wan spent his days leaning on the Force to gamble, carefully never winning so much as to make those around him angry, moving from gambling house to gambling house to keep attention away from how much he was making.
He staged meetings with Shmi where Wato could see them, and he tried to make her laugh.
They talked about their pasts, quietly.
There was some undercurrent to Shmi’s stories that she wasn’t telling him, but she wasn’t hiding the depths of her care for her community. She wasn’t hiding how that unseen undercurrent shaped her view of the world. She wasn’t hiding her understanding of violence.
Shmi was not a pacifist. There was no room for pacifism in her. Violence was done to her and her people - nonviolence would not solve it. A conspicuous refusal to fight only worked if someone powerful paid attention and cared. And no one with power cared about the slaves of Tatooine.
Shmi understood what Obi-wan meant when he talked about the Jedi as peacekeepers. She knew what he was talking about when he talked about how few Jedi there were and the oversight of the Senate, and how they did their best to go where they were needed even so. He got the sense that she didn’t necessarily approve of their priorities, but also that she felt that it was not her place to approve or disapprove. The Jedi were not her people.
Once, Obi-wan loosened the collars of his tunics to show Shmi the scars on his throat from various shock collars over the years. He had seen Wato watching out of the corner of his eye as Shmi reached up to trace the faded scars on his throat. He’d turned slightly until he couldn’t see him anymore and focused his attention on Shmi.
()
Obi-wan didn’t realise it, the first time Anakin called him his parent.
He heard the word, but he didn’t know what it meant.
“Ipa! Ipa! Obi-wan !” Anakin called, and Obi-wan turned away from the stall he was contemplating as Anakin tugged at his sleeve. “Can we get some pallies please?”
And again - “Ipa! Obi-wan! Amee needs to go deal with the Jawas, and you come with us?”
And again - “Ipa!”
Obi-wan was already turning as Anakin ran up to him. “Ipa tell them I can do the bell dances!”
“Ani - we’re supposed to be buying food, and you're supposed to be helping. You don’t have time to dance.”
“Okay, okay, but I can dance right? Like, I’m not terrible at it.”
“I don’t know Ani, why don’t you show me when we get home.”
“Ipa! That’s not an answer!”
“Come on, Ani.”
()
Near the end of the month, Obi-wan roused from his meditation to Shmi watching over him as she had every night.
She was nursing a cup of tea for herself, and she gave Obi-wan a cup of blue milk.
“What does ipa mean?” Obi-wan asked her as he accepted the cup.
“For you, from Anakin, it would mean father,” Shmi said.
Obi-wan startled, but managed to keep the blue milk from sloshing out of his cup. He set it down on the table very precisely. “I’m not his father,” Obi-wan said. “I am, if anything, his brother. He was supposed to be Qui-gon’s padawan, not mine, which would have made him my lineage brother -”
“But he is not Qui-gon Jinn’s padawan,” Shmi said. “You are the one who has raised him for the past year. Your relationship does not have to be equal. To you, he is your brother, to him, you are his father. You are raising my son.” She paused. “You are attracted to me.”
Obi-wan found that he could not look at her. “Yes,” he said. “I will not act upon it.”
“Explain to me?” Shmi asked.
“I will not initiate a relationship with you while you are free and I am not. It would not be right of me, even though you are a person even now. And even after you are free, I feel that it would not be right, as I am the one acting to free you. Perhaps after some time has passed . . . but I cannot promise you time. I am committed to the Jedi and will not leave them for you. If, in time, you want that, then I would be glad to share happiness with you. But not right now. And not as a commitment.”
“You have thought about this before,” Shmi said.
“I have fallen in love before. For her, I was ready to walk away from the Order, if only she would ask. She did not ask.” Obi-wan paused to drink from the cup of blue milk Shmi had given them. “I have changed since then. I am now a Jedi Knight. It would mean more, for me to leave now. And . . . she needed me, though she didn’t not ask for me to stay. The Jedi need me. You do not need me.”
Shmi considered him. Then she turned and poured a cup of tea from the pot sitting on the counter and offered it to him. “I cannot promise anything,” she said, “but you are my son’s father. You are family of my family, and the galaxy is large and harsh. If you come this way again and have need, I will shelter you.
That was no small thing for a slave to promise, even more so on a desert world such as Tatooine where the margins of survival were tight.
Obi-wan stared at the offered cup. He had noticed that Shmi never offered him her tea before. She drank it, and Anakin and Kitster, but it was never offered to him. There was always something else for him.
“Is there a proper response?” Obi-wan asked. “Do I need to say anything?”
Shmi smiled at him and shook her head. “Not for this. Take it. Drink.”
Obi-wan took the cup. He hesitated, then looked up and met Shmi’s eyes. “I cannot offer you the same. My home is closed to outsiders for good reason, and I am often traveling far from it. But I will show you how to contact me, and if you have need, I will do what I can to help.”
Shmi nodded, and Obi-wan drank.
()
Wato sold Shmi.
They went to the registry and registered her as free.
They booked passage to Naboo, where Kitster and Shmi’s chips were removed.
And then . . .
“You can come with me if you want,” Shmi told Anakin, holding him close. “But you will be safer with the Jedi. They have more resources than I do.”
“I know,” Anakin said, his words muffled against the shoulder of her shirt. “I’ll miss you.”
“I’ll miss you too, Ani.”
()
Shmi and Kitster left.
(“Be brave. And don’t look back.”)