Never Stop Loving
The flight from Naboo was a blur of fear, anxiety, and nightmares that left Jedi Padawan Anakin Skywalker's head spinning and his chest churning, and not even the presence of Padme in the seat beside him had eased his suffering. He was barely aware of what he had been doing, his body on autopilot as the rest of him spazzed out and rebelled against itself.
It all started with those kriffing nightmares.
Anakin had confided in his master Obi-Wan about his dreams, the images of his mother dying horrifically and constantly. Obi-Wan hadn't understood.
"Jedi don't have attachments." He had said. "You are just having dreams because of the fear from losing your attachment to Shmi."
Anakin had seen red then. He had to walk away.
For once the young Padawan had wanted Obi-Wan to be right though, about them only being dreams though, even if his tacked on lesson was unnecessary and had enraged Anakin.
To Obi-Wan she was just Shmi, slave woman from Tatooine, but to Anakin she is Mom, his first love, and greatest beacon of light in his life. Shmi is the example Anakin strives to emulate, he wants with all his heart to make her proud and free her and the slaves.
Instead, he failed to protect her. Instead he had been a galaxy away playing Jedi while she had suffered. He is a terrible son.
He had landed his procured starship in the outskirts of his hometown and pressed the inhabitants for information, he even faced his old owner and after barely restraining to urge to bisect the floating Toydarian grub.
He discovered that Shmi had been freed by a moisture farmer and rushed to the Lars homestead and there he met his step-father, Cliegg Lars. His step-father was an older man and had bought and freed Shmi Skywalker and married her a few years prior. When she had been kidnapped Cliegg had tried to rescue her but ultimately failed. he had lost a leg for his attempt leaving him confined to a hover-chair with a broken body and broken heart.
The confused man had barely breathed a greeting when Anakin flew into his questions, when the old man had finally managed to gather himself when he realized he is speaking with Shmi's beloved son and finally broke the news to his step-son.
Sand people, Sand people had Shmi. Sand people kidnapped his mother.
Anakin hadn't heard Padme's pleas to slow down and think this through. He had snatched a speeder had had vanished into the desert alone, leaving a distraught Padme at the Lars homestead staring helpless at his rapidly shrinking back.
Finding the Sand people's village normally would be next to impossible in the empty expanse of swirling sand. This was no normal situation however, nor was Anakin your normal hunter, he is a Jedi, a very pissed off and angry Jedi looking for his mother.
He found the village atop a cliff face overlooking the Mos Espa plains just south of the actual spaceport proper. Anakin felt a bit of irony to discover that these very same raiders are very likely the same ones that had taken potshots at him during his pod-races as a child.
He leapt from the still flying speeder and descended onto the hapless desert dwelling barbarians, his lightsaber ignited and dancing in a whirlwind of viridescent light and ruthless fury. The tusken raiders put up a meager resistance up at best, their cobbled together long rifles spitting laser fire fitfully from their rusted barrels. Anakin flicked the bolts away effortlessly, redirecting the lasers back into the mob of attackers until he was close enough to cut into the squawking semi-humans with ease.
The stench of sizzling flesh and screech of dying sand people fell on deaf senses, Anakin's entire being homed in the faint life inside a ramshackle tent at the back of the village, its light weakly pulsing and rapidly fading with every heartbeat.
His stride lengthened as fear gripped his heart. he barely registered a trio of spear wielding raiders charge him with their honking and squawking war cries. He simply stepped a bit to the left and split one creature down the middle with a jerk of his green 'saber. The other two tusken raiders lost their heads with his follow up strike, their weapons shorn down the middle as if they were flimsiplast and all the while Anakin never broke his stride.
The surviving sand people squealed and bleated in terror at witnessing their warriors cut down as if they were an afterthought, the wiser of their number fled from the light wielding monster of death, their young and belongings clutched in their claws as they scrambled from the demon's path.
Anakin ignored their cries of anger and fear and ducked into the filthy hide hovel with his heart in his throat. The sight that greeted him broke him.
She looked like a broken doll, abused, hurt, and discarded atop a pile of stolen rugs along with the rest of the pilfered loot on the hovel floor, her limbs askew and her beautiful face marred with a layer of bruises and cuts. Anakin barely saw this though; his deep blue eyes were on the rapidly growing pool of blood staining and spreading through the rest of the fabric his wonderful mother lay on.
Shmi stirred, a sting of pain from the sleeve of harsh sunlight from Anakin parting the hovel's curtain striking her closed eyes. A quiet breathy moan broke from her lips and her cold pale fingers trailed down the hole in her stomach and she lifted her trembling hand up towards the light, his name spilled softly from her blued lips like a prayer.
"Anakin…" Shmi whispered, delirious from blood loss and pain, but her eyes- eyes far wiser and deeper than his own- were blessedly clear and stronger than his ever were. "Oh Ani. My little boy…"
"M-Mom?" Anakin whimpered, his stony expression cracked, showing the terrified young man underneath the vengeful warrior.
His lightsaber fizzled out with a hiss and the padawan collapsed next to Shmi Skywalker, his legs weak and trembling. He took his mother's outstretched hand in both of his own and interlaced their fingers. Shmi's fingers were cold, far too cold.
Anakin's throat worked to swallow, to force the words his needed to say out. He was partially successful but all that did was break his already crumbling walls.
"I'm sorry." He choked out, his head bowed under the weight of his guilt and self-hatred until his forehead rested on his mother's chest, heedless of her blood soaking his skin and hair. "I'm sorry Mom, I'm so s-sorry!"
"This is all my fault." He choked, hot tears spilling freely from his watery blue eyes. "I should have stopped this. I promised to become a Jedi to save you and free all the slaves! I should have saved you! I-I…!"
"Ani." Shmi's hoarse whisper had a strength to it that belayed her otherwise fading body. Shmi's hoarse whisper had a power to it, one that belayed her otherwise fading body. Her strength drawn not from her failing flesh, but her heart and soul.
"You did save me." She said, her cold, weak fingers gently squeezing his hand. "you saved me the day you were born.""I love you." She said, her bloodied and weak fingers suddenly finding the strength to squeeze her broken son's trembling hand
Anakin hiccupped into his chest in reply, drawing a breathy laugh from Shmi. Her light pulsed weakly, fading more and more as she spoke, as if using the last vestiges of her soul's strength to reach her precious boy's breaking heart.
"You are my hero Ani. You always… always have been. You don't have to… be a Jedi for me to be proud of you…" Her breath came up wet and ragged, her voice fainter but not less resolute.
"Listen to me baby…" Shmi rasped, her hand trailing crimson trails down her son's cheek and turned his head until his sky-blue eyes met her clear chestnut and green gaze.
"No matter what happens… no matter how much it hurts…" Shmi wiped a tear from Anakin's cheek. "Promise me-"
"Never stop loving."
It was well into the evening when a lone speeder crested the dunes over the Lars Homestead, only one of Tatooine's twin suns was still peaking over the sandy horizon, painting the sky in hazy hues of pink and orange.
The Lars family had retreated to their dinner table, Cliegg Lars urged Padme to eat with them to keep up her strength for his step-son's return. Padme declined, preferring to stand vigil under the front door awning, just the thought of attempting to choke down a meal made her nauseous.
She was the first to see the dust cloud kicked up in the speeder's wake, her heart leaping into her throat. Her usually refined and collected demeanor was thrown out the window in her frantic haste to drag Anakin's step-family from their home.
She pulled Cliegg's hover chair out of the doorway just as Anakin pulled the speeder to a stop, upon seeing him by himself astride the vehicle and the bloodstained cloth wrapped body cradled lovingly in his arms Padme's hands covered her mouth in horror. Cliegg sat beside her, his face stricken and his shoulders shaking in silent tears as his step-son dismounted the speeder and stumbled over with his Shmi's body clutched to his chest.
Anakin stood before Padme and his Step-father; his eyes red expression shattered. He worked his mouth and throat to say something, anything, but nothing came out except for a choked sob.
Owen Lars Anakin's step-brother stepped forward to try to take Shmi's body but Anakin refused to relinquish his hold. Padme gently pushed aside the older moisture farmer and instead of trying to take his mother's body she brushed a hand across the petite bloody handprint on Anakin's face. Her gentle touch ghosting over where his mother last held him broke whatever control Anakin had left and he collapsed against her sobbing, his weight dragging them down to their knees in the sand with Shmi's body cradled between them.
Anakin felt a shaking weight settle on one shoulder and he looked up to see Cliegg quietly crying, his hand on his step-son's shoulder as he mourned Shmi's loss. A few seconds later two more hands joined Cliegg's Owen and his wife circled around their Jedi step-brother, their sorrow thrummed in the force like rain against a window. Anakin let go of his shields, his grief rolling over them all in the force. If his family's sadness felt like a rainstorm, his was a tsunami. His power filled to air and rushed through his force bonds, slamming into Obi-wan Kenobi's bond with the full force of a surging flood overwhelming a levy even from half a galaxy away and nearly knocking the Jedi Master off his feet.
"I wanted…" Anakin choked out. "I wanted to kill them." He confessed. "I needed to kill those Raiders. B-but…" He struggled to suck in a shuddering breath. "I didn't."
Anakin clutched at his mother's body as a new wave of grief overtook him.
"She said I was her hero." He sobbed. "And… and no matter what I don't want to let her down."
A/N: Greetings!
Untraveled here. This is most likely the first time we have met so it is a pleasure to meet y'all!
Never Stop Loving is a small piece that I had been wanting to write for a short while and I had wanted to give homage to my own wonderful mother.
In my humble opinion Shmi is one of the unsung heroines of the Star Wars universe. In the few short scenes she has in the movies she is a believably human character with a heart of steely gold. Sure she couldn't force push a Sith lord through a Transparisteel window or turn a battalion of battle droids into metal matte but she never once stopped smiling, even in her last moments.
Anakin was weaker in heart than his mother, and in the prequels his rage soured his soul and he forgot his mother's lesson; Love is the most powerful force in the Universe.
In this AU Shmi reminded her son of this, and instead of slaughtering the monsters that ultimately killed his mother Anakin left them alive. A small but critical detail that changes everything in Anakin's fall to the dark side.
This time he has taken Shmi's words to heart and perhaps Anakin will remember to Never Stop Loving.
Who knows how this will change the galaxy?
-Untraveled