Jobal wanted to go back to Varykino.

It was foolish, she knew, foolish to mourn for a house that was still there, still waiting for the family's return during school retreat. Besides, the girls liked it here in Theed. She had brought Sola once to see her ailing grandfather when she was very small, but that was so long ago that her elder daughter was just as enamored with the capital city as little Padmé.

She didn't blame them, not when there was nothing nearly as exciting back on their little island. Here in Theed there were museums and shopping centers and the royal palace and those marvelous waterfalls. She and Ru were taking the girls to the theater in honor of Sola's eleventh life day that very evening. Plenty for a little girl to be excited about. There were no great theaters in the Lake Country…

And that was why Jobal wanted to go back.

It had seemed like a good idea, such a good idea at the time. How marvelous. Those had been her exact words (oh, they had been, hadn't they?) when Ru had suggested it. After all, she herself had been raised in Theed, and knew what a wonderful education could be found there, how cultured her girls could become. And then there was Padmé, who was eight years old and knew just what she wanted to do with her life.

There had been a good many arguments on the matter. Jobal, rather selfishly, she knew, had been hoping her little girl might choose History, so she could attend The Valha Seminary as she had. It was far too late for Sola, who had rather radically decided on Architecture two years before and already was studying for her Elementary. But Padmé was adamant, and Jobal very much blamed Ru on their daughter's ability to present her argument so convincingly. Then again, perhaps that was just further proof that she ought to be allowed. Legislature it was, then.

But in the midst of this academic storm, she had forgotten one very important thing, the reason why she had pressed upon Ru to take up his inheritance at Varykino when they married.

It was true she had grown up in Theed, done her Elementary at Valha and gone on to her Superior at Myoon. Accepted invitations to parties of school friends (with a new dress shimmering in the dark and the terribly thrilling rebellion that comes with just that one deathstick). Gone to the theater, gone to lunch, gone to stay with Linal for a weekend, just the weekend (another wouldn't hurt anyone). Been wined and dined by Naboo and off-worlders alike, charmed with her degree and the lovely way her dark eyes caught the light as she told the story of Kiavé and her royal incarnations (just that one more, then). Met Ru (Ruwee Naberrie, old money, Lake Country aristocrat – you'd like him), found he was so much more, and never once looked back.

Varykino had no theaters, and Jobal found she rather liked that. There were islands instead of palaces, and lakeside terraces instead of the latest restaurants. There were no parties there, unless the wonderfully wicked Winama happened to drop by, and then there were the children. Her two gorgeous, perfect little girls who swam out to the tiny island near the beach every day in summer, and tried to convince her one day that they were not her daughters but matanga birds.

Her own mother would have had a heart attack if she could see the way she let the girls run wild. "One simply does not behave like a savage in Theed," she would have said, and Jobal would have smiled respectfully and replied, "I imagine that's why I far prefer Varykino."

(Sola was already worried about what she was going to wear to the theater, because her new friend Anala surely was going to be there, as well.)

But here they were again.

It was no paradise, but Shmi didn't think she had ever had so much room to breathe in her life. Even as a child, bound to a nomadic trader and no stranger to the vast openness of the desert, she and her mother had kept to their corner of the tent, their only privacy in the language of a life that was stolen from them. Then her mother was gone, and Shmi was left an involuntary wanderer.

There had been dark rooms and caravans and shops and the brothel and bars and transports and then the palace. Gardulla's palace had been the worst of them all, with the dampness and the clamor and the utter stink of human and Twi'lek waste. And then there had been Anakin, who she had never worried about so much in his life.

Shmi and her young son had shared the tiny room above the bar with only one other, a Rodian girl named Alar who found children a nuisance but generally left them alone. Ani had been neglected more often than not, soothed to sleep when the blaster fire from down below could be heard above, and gotten into his share of trouble when left alone for too long, but for two years or so there had been relative peace.

When they came under the ownership of Gardulla, their careful life, her constant mantra of I can make this work, came all but crashing down.

Rooms built for five, sleeping twenty. Bodily waste left in corners for lack of time or place. Deathstick dealers and pirates and bounty hunters. Sentient life as a thing to be toyed with and thrown away when finished. The constant stench of the Hutt. How could a mother protect her child from such horrors when she could barely protect herself?

Shmi spent half of her time living in fear of what her boy's strange precociousness might one day bring him, and the other half in utter relief, because Anakin had a good head on his shoulders. At the age of three, he knew to finish his work quietly, do what he could to help the other children, and stay by her side whenever possible. Above all, he knew not to draw attention to himself. He knew this rule was cardinal, and yet Shmi worried, because attention seemed to follow Anakin anyway.

She needn't have bothered.

The Toydarian's dialect was going to take some getting used to, but she had understood well enough. Gardulla liked to brag, but she liked to gamble even more, and the Toydarian – Watto, that was his name – had been adamant that her debt covered two slaves. Shmi was under the distinct impression that he simply didn't want to deal with a five year-old on his own, no matter how gifted a mechanic. But she was grateful. Anakin was a valuable slave, one that Watto wouldn't let go of easily. He would be able to survive on his own here even after she was sold on, as she knew she would be one day.

For now, Shmi was simply happy. It was the first time she had allowed herself the luxury in over two years, and it had nothing to do with their new quarters, no matter how overwhelmingly enormous. It was the tired child being tucked into his own bed for the first time in his life, and the promise of a life worth defending.

("I never really had a home. Home was always where my mom was," he says, and she wishes she knew what that meant.)