Chapter Two: The Lunch Date
Although it wasn't yet light out when Padmé woke up the next morning, Anakin was already gone, the little bed that had once belonged to Shmi Skywalker neatly made.
Watto's having me scrub down the place before some bigshot comes in for thrusters, explained the scratchy recording he'd left on the table when she clicked it to life. Probably not gonna make it for lunch. She was glad he'd thought enough not to leave a note. Their lessons hadn't come far enough for that.
Smiling faintly at his hospitality, Padmé picked up the breakfast he had left her and munched idly on a lamta leaf as she wandered outdoors.
Dawn was breaking, pale cracks of light streaking the dark northwest sky where Tattoo I would soon emerge. A herd of banthas were on the move far out in the distance. The old homeless woman who huddled against the western wall every night slept soundly on. A baby cried out somewhere nearby. Three doors down, one Rachel Blackshore emerged onto the ledge and threw the night's waste over and down.
"So that's where you disappeared to," she said, casually slinging the buckets over both shoulders and sauntering over to meet Padmé. "I'm shocked."
"Don't start, Chels, you were being horrible."
"And here I thought you were trying to escape Baia's attempts to turn you into a woman."
"That, too," she admitted. "Is Alar feeling any better?"
Chels raised an eyebrow and said, "Well if by 'feeling any better' you mean 'pregnant,' then yes, she's feeling swell."
"No!"
"Mhm."
"Again."
"Yep. More Twi'brats. Because we really have the room."
"It's better than the alternative," Padmé grimly reminded her, because Alar really was going to be a mess when the inevitable separation came. "Does Derjik know yet?"
Chels shook her head, leaned against the wall.
"No," she said. "I'll tell him today. She's still a disgusting mess so I'm pulling double for her."
There was a moment of calm then, a tiny moment where, as Chels looked out across the vast stretch of sand, as the sky grew lighter by the moment, Padmé looked at the taller, darker, older girl and realized that, for all her bravado and tough exterior, Chels really was one of the most decent people she knew.
Which was, in truth, quite a shocking realization.
Derjik made a little throaty noise when Chels broke the news of Alar's condition to him, which could have meant any manner of things, and likely meant them all.
On the one hand, pregnancy was one of the simplest and actually the cheapest way to acquire new slaves. They came free of charge, and the only downside was that one had to wait at least five years or so before putting them to any sort of real work.
And Derjik can't have been entirely surprised, Padmé reasoned. He had provided the fathers.
The rub was simple. Derjik's tavern turned more than a decent profit, luring in regulars and those just passing through with its all-female task force, but the Hapan was uncompromisingly stingy. There was no possible way he would shell out the money needed to purchase another compound of Slave Quarters Row, and the simple truth was that, with Padmé, Baia-Sol, Chels, Danya, Kee, Alar, and her merry brood of children, there was no room left for even the smallest of babies.
Change was in the air. It was inevitable at this point, and that was a frightening prospect.
Chels was a powerhouse, there was no denying that, but not even she could be two people at once. By the time they closed at noon for hunka be, Padmé was so exhausted that she nearly forgot what she'd resolved to do upon hearing the recorded message that morning.
"Have you got anything extra?" she asked quietly, back in the kitchen.
Kee glanced out to the main room and, once confident that Derjik had already left, nodded to Baia. "Be quick," the old woman said.
It was an unnecessary warning.
Knowing Derjik's knack for inventory, Padmé bundled no more than two ahrisa balls and a string of podpoppers in her satchel before taking off down the dusty road.
The tavern was meant to attract spacers, resulting in its close proximity to the docking bays, but she knew well the winding route through Mos Espa's streets to the merchant district.
Preferring to avoid the unpleasant Toydarian if she could, Padmé skirted around to the back of the shop and hopped the fence into the junkyard.
Anakin smiled when she stood up, brushing herself off.
"I didn't know you were coming to see me."
Cross-legged against the wall, he was covered in soot, a metal heatshield balancing precariously on his head, both explained by the mechanical part and welding flame held in either hand. For the briefest of moments, Anakin was nine years old again, just as she had met him, a scruffy little boy in a junkyard. His hair was longer now, shaggier but just as bleached. And his legs and arms and torso and everything was longer, too, suddenly a teenage boy on the verge of manhood before her eyes.
When did that happen?
"Lunch," she said smiling, tossing the little bundle towards him, and that's when it happened.
The welding flame hit the ground with a decisive thump, and the bundle stopped in midair. Wide-eyed, Padmé silently followed its trajectory to Anakin's outstretched hand. Eyebrows furrowed, he concentrated, eyes never leaving the bundle, as it slowly continued its path and finally met with his palm. He closed his long fingers around the prize.
The third time that month.
"Has Watto noticed any – "
"No," he cut her off brusquely.
But Padmé wasn't letting him off that easily. "Anakin," she said, the tension rising in her voice, "this isn't a game. You have to be more careful. If he sees you – "
"He didn't see me."
"But if he did."
"I try not to live my life through 'ifs.'"
"You're impossible. You need control."
"I can't," he said, not angry, just utterly exasperated. "I can't even explain why, it's just a part of who I am. It feels so natural. I can't help that I'm… different."
There it was, the reason that Padmé worried for her friend as much as she did. Anakin was many things that set him apart from the daily milieu – racing prodigy, fiercely loyal companion, mathematical genius, one of the few literate people she knew… but then there were those things, those unexplainable things like what had just happened. Those things – those powers made him different, and nothing could be more dangerous for a slave than being different.
Anakin set down his lunch in the sand, pulled off the heatshield and left it there, too. He took Padmé's hands in his and suddenly she was very aware that, sometime while she hadn't been paying attention, he'd actually grown taller than her.
"Look," he said, suddenly serious for both their sakes, "I've dealt with this all my life. I've hid it from everyone. I don't know why it's so much harder now, flaring up all the time, but I can handle it. You don't need to worry about me."
"More promises?"
"No. Guarantees."
