Chapter Text
Shmi Skywalker dies in the desert, in a Tusken camp hostile to her, in her estranged son’s arms.
Shmi Skywalker wakes up in a slave pen, in pain after birth, in the arms of the Grandmother in Gardulla’s Nal Hutta compound.
A tiny, fragile newborn is feeding hungrily on her breast. A babe with bright blue eyes. Not green. Not golden. Not brown.
Anakin. Not opra. Not Anisa. Not Beru. Not Shna.
The child that she kept until the Jedi took him when he was nine. Not the children that she lost after they were five years old or even younger, sold separately by Ziro and Graccus and Jabba.
Not the child she lost shortly after the latter was weened because Watto did not want the burden of sheltering an infant slave and Gardulla did not want to lose three assets at the same time, either.
She breathes. And she can breathe. She can feel.
Pain is an old friend. But this pain is different from what she suffered in that Tusken camp. This pain is familiar. This pain is the most wholesome price she has had to pay in her life, shelled out frice over.
“You are safe, child. Your child is safe,” the Grandmother breathes in her ear.
Shmi cannot nod her acknowledgement. She cannot even open her eyes just to blink them, to send the acknowledgement another way. But she does acknowledge the truth the Grandmother comforts her with:
She is safe because her child is alive and promises to be a sound investment for her master after nine months of reduced work.
Her child is safe because he is yet to be chipped, yet to be claimed as a slave in deed.
These are words the Grandmother no doubt has spoken numerous times before. These are words Shmi has heard five times to date, and spoken thrice more to others despite her relative youth at this point, if her previous lifetime – previous lifetime! – were to be disregarded.
These are the words that she clings to when she thinks-vows-believes on this thin mattress that serves as her birthbed with her second son feeding from her, `Not again. Not now. No more.`