"Ani, please --"

"No, you please," he said, repressing tears with all his strength. He didn't want to cry. Not in front of Mommy. Not after all she'd done to him. "Please don't call me that. Please don't --"

"Ani!"

With that voice, he could hardly bear to argue.

"I'll swipe that part you've been wanting for 3PO. The one Watto wouldn't give you."

A tempting bargain. Once 3PO was completed, Anakin Skywalker would have a friend. At long last, he would have a friend. Force knew Mommy didn't qualify.

"Mommy --" he stopped himself. "Mother." And then, angrily, enragedly, "Shmi. Do not make me --"

Her open palm left a mark against his flesh. Dazed, he staggered backward, nearly keeled. She'd hit him hard, holding nothing back, all of her strength and frustration and rage going into that strike. And so he caved.

"Fine," he whispered. "Fine."

#

He stood on the street corner, leg extended, his mother's overlong shirt draped over his seven-year-old body like a skirt. He wore a wig, rouge, lipstick, blue eyeshadow which went well with his sand-blond hair.

A Hutt slithered up to him. An ancient Hutt, wrinkled and corpulent, its face twisted into a leer.

The tail undulated toward Ani. Wrapped around him. Squeezed.

Ani trudged along with the Hutt. At the end of the night, though he was in horrible pain, he clutched 600 credits in his sweaty palm.