As it happens, it appears that Padme´s hopeful dreams of finding Anakin´s mother were quickly debunked and torn apart from the unexpected news of Anakin´s also new family, they seemed pleased to meet the Padawan for the very first time, but their acquaintances came in with bad bearings. Anakin´s visions were seemly not wrong in alerting the young Jedi of immediate danger for his mother and as soon as Claigg Lars appeared in sight, he quickly told them of Shmi´s fate. A tribe of Tusken Raiders had kidnaped the blonde's Jedi mother and wounded his now step-father. Before Claigg or even Padmé could talk him out of it, the Padawan was quickly into action once more, this time, declaring he must save his mother.

"You are going to have to stay here" Anakin instructed her once his now step brother offered his speeder-bike to aid his search. It was said with kindness and understanding, but it was certainly an order, not a petition. Padmé took it without complaining, Anakin seemed calm despite the news and the raging anger he must be feeling inside his heart, she didn´t want to worry him more than his trouble mind must be already.

Anakin leaves without a second thought, driving the speeder bike through the desert, knowing full well, even after all these years away from this planet, his home-planet, where to go. He recognizes the mountains, the shapes of red rock that he used to memorized when he was a kid; he remember the midnight moon, shining in the sky while he imagined to fly away from that sandy planet, to travel through the stars and the constellations, discovering new systems, meeting new people, having adventures and becoming a character of famous legends. But now he was here, back at the place he despised the most in the entire galaxy, desperate and helpless once again. Trying to find the only person who ever loved him for him.

It took a while, but when he finally found the group of Tuskens, they were all enjoying a warm fire, oblivious of his presence. Anakin almost feels like cutting them down in that instance, but he makes an effort to keep himself in line, he needed to get to his mother, all those disgusting creatures could die for all he cared. With the power of the Force he guides himself to feel the presence of his mother, after all, he was outnumbered by the raiders, he couldn´t just walk in and try to guess in which of the huts they were keeping her. Suddenly, he felt it. It has been so long since he last felt her calming and lovely signature. But it was still fresh in his mind. The wonderful and warm feeling that only Shmi Skywalker could give, like a beacon of light in the middle of the cold darkness, and Anakin grabbed at it like a lost child. He held to it and wish to never let it go.

He quickly sneaked around the crowded camp, making sure that his steps were silent and that his presence went unnoticed, the veil of the night hides him well enough and the loud sounds that the bunch of mindless beasts and banthas make manages to hide the sound of his own lightsaber when he finally activates it to complete a hole on the back wall of the hut. He enters as smoothly as he infiltrated the camp, eyes quickly assessing every corner around him, a collection of numerous lit candles illuminates the space good enough for him to see the tortured and bloodied figure of his mother hanging from a wooden frame.

Anakin instantly panics. He rushes to her side and uses his still turned lightsaber to cut the straps that encloses her hurt wrists. Once his mother is safe, tucked in the warmth and secure arms of her son, he takes a moment to inspect her face. The face he had seen so many times in his dreams and that he never gets to touch when he finally wakes up from them. She is beaten, tortured and manhandled, he almost screams in agony at the sight of her mother´s appearance. His fingers cradles her carefully, tenderly. Allowing himself to feel her skin with the tip of his phalanges.

Suddenly, Shmi opens her eyes slowly, as if the sole action of regaining conscious was difficult and exhausting.

"Mom… mom…" Anakin moans as if he was suddenly stroked with a blunt object in the back of his head, his eyes quickly filling with water that begged to be released.

"Annie…? ...is it you?" she asks in a weak voice, so weak that Anakin wants to finally burst into a river of tears; he wants to hold her tight and never let her go out of his sight again, he wants to take her away, far, far away from Tatooine, from that disgusting Force forsaken planet that had only brought them pain. He wants to kill them all too, kill all those beasts that ever dare to hurt her, to even look at her in the wrong way.

"I´m here, mom. You are safe" he promises, finally founding his voice through his turbulent thoughts. "Hang on. I´m going to get you out of here…"

"I´m so glad to see you…" she smiles even through her pain and obvious discomfort "Annie… now I´m complete…"

That sounds more like a goodbye than Anakin was ever going to be able to accept. She couldn´t be letting go, not after he just had found her again, not after all these years away from her arms, all this time separated from each other´s smiles. She couldn´t possibly leave him alone. Not again.

"Just stay with me, mom. I´m going to make you well again. Everything it´s going to be fine" he pleaded like a child. Because that is exactly how he felt. Like a defenseless child in need of his mother.

"You look so handsome…" she touches his face then, holding a smile of joy even through her misery. "I´m so proud of you, Annie… so proud… I missed you so much… I love…"

And then it´s just silence. Anakin waits for her to continue, to open her eyes once again, for her to smile while he cries but nothing happens. There is only silence and emptiness. He is really crying then. His tears full with anger and despair flow freely though his face like they have never before. Not even when he had his first nightmare at the Temple, not even when all the initiates mocked him and refuse to sit with him during his first month as a Padawan learner, not even when he cried himself to sleep when he missed his mom and when he felt he couldn´t connect with his Master even when he already loved her. He cried and he cried and he couldn´t stop. Just when he is about to throw himself onto his mother dead body in defeat, he listens. Through the immaculate silence of the hut, he can clearly hear the sounds of the Tuskens, their awful noises and growls, and something ugly and dark deep inside him twist at the known presence of his mother´s killers. His anger consumes him to the core, and his sadness quickly dissipates to only leave the rage of a dragon that lives inside his chest. Anakin suddenly sees red and can almost taste his own bile inside his mouth.

He stands up, leaving the corpse of Shmi behind in the cold sand, he leaves the hut, but this time, Anakin isn´t sneaking from the back as he entered the room in the first place, he opens the entrance and stares at the Tuskens that enjoy the fire and their mindless conversations, not noticing the young man that stands with fury in his eyes and only a purpose inside his mind.

A small child looks at him, Anakin notices. The Padawan stares at him as well. He is small, blameless and probably none the wiser of what just happened there, ignorant of the anger and loathing that Anakin feels for all his kind. The young Jedi could almost see himself in him, a time ago, when he was just a slave in Tatooine, when he was weak and little and naive too. "Not anymore", he growls. But ignorant didn´t mean innocent, Anakin decided. And it´s for that decision that he reached for his saber and in a swift motion turned it on. What follows are screams and pleas and crying but Anakin doesn´t stop. He never stops. Not even when he sees the child running away, scared of him. Not even when he sees his lightsaber stuck in his little chest. Not even when he is no longer breathing, and Anakin, finds out, is no longer good. When he finds out he cannot be good ever again.


Padmé was resting, talking with 3PO and Owen when suddenly Beru yells at them from the outside of the house. She announces that Anakin is back, or so Padmé hopes, they all quickly rushes out of the farm to stare at the upcoming figure of the Padawan; he is riding Owen´s speeder bike, he parks the machine and walks away from the bike with a wrapped figure in his arms. Everybody around them look confused, as they didn´t understand what was happening, but Padmé understood. She gasped in horror at the sight of it. Anakin´s eyes were red and angry, filled with emotions that were too dangerous to have for a Jedi. He silently stares at the group while he passes them by and carries the body of his mother inside the homestead.

Padmé doesn´t dare to approach him for a while, the young man it´s too troubled for her to console, instead, she grieves silently with the Lars family, Owen and Claigg are devastated, and Beru it´s rubbing Owen´s back as the young man stares at the table with apprehension. When a couple of hours pass, the Senator decides that she cannot ignore the young Jedi´s despair any longer, she fixes a tray of food and carries to the garage, where Owen told her that Anakin is currently hidden, when she arrives, she sees the apprentice is kneeling at the speeder bike that Owen had lend him to find his mother.

She doesn´t make a sound, but when Anakin speaks to her without even facing her, she is not surprised. After all, the boy is a Jedi.

"The shifter broke" he explains as if she has asked. "Life seems so much simpler when you´re fixing things."

Padmé puts the tray down beside her. Sensing that the warrior still had words he wanted to say. Real words, this time, not excuses nor getaways.

"I´m good at fixing things… always was. But I couldn´t… I couldn´t fix her life, I couldn´t fix my relationship with my Master… I couldn´t…" he stops, throwing the electronic wrench away from his hands, as if disgusted by the tool. He is crying now, tears roaming down his cheeks "Why did she have to die?!"

"Sometimes there are things no one can fix. You´re not all-powerful, Annie" She tries to appease, voice calmed and eyes full with understatement.

Suddenly, the man approached the abandoned wrench again, he picks it up with his right hand and starts working at the bike once again, as if the sudden outburst hadn´t happened.

"I should be!" he declares while his hands busy themselves with his work "Someday I will be… I will be the most powerful Jedi ever! I promise you, I will even learn to stop people from dying!"

His words are unbecoming of a Jedi and the young man could almost hear his Master´s voice inside his head, whispering at his ear that he was being childish and overemotional. Anakin´s heart thunders at the memory of his beautiful but cruel Master. Her deceiving lies coming from such beautiful lips, it enrages him and it eats him from the inside, this love. She should be here with him, consoling him, embracing him, not away in Force-knew where, doing her duty, which was the only thing she cared about. Instead, Padmé is right there, scared of him but still beside him as if he mattered, as if he was loved and needed. Oh, how Anakin wants to love her. He wants to give everything to this woman. He almost forces his heart to do so. To see her and see true beauty, to desire her caresses and her love, to dream about her face and to beg for her voice, but instead of all that sweetness, he looks at her eyes and all he thinks it´s how they lack the clear gray of Obi-Wan´s orbs, how they don´t dare to change from those clouded shades to a fiery blue when she is happy and a powerful thunderstorm green when she gets upset. He hears her voice but never listens because she is not Obi-Wan. How he thinks she is lovely but never breath-taking because she lacks Obi-Wan´s features. How her silhouette it´s delicate but never invites him to embrace it because she is not as tall as Obi-Wan, as curved as Obi-Wan, as perfect as Obi-Wan, and he hates it. And for a moment, for a small moment, he hates Obi-Wan too. Hates her with a passion that rivals the love that he feels for her.

"It´s all Obi-Wan´s fault!" Anakin explodes, stalking away from the bike for good, throwing the tool away from his hands once again; Padmé jumps on her place, scare of the sudden rush of emotions.

"Anakin…" Padmé whispers, small hands raised in a calm gesture, trying to control his anger.

"It´s Obi-Wan´s fault" he repeats "She is cruel and unfeeling, incapable to love or to even care like all the other Jedi! And she is jealous! She knows that I´m even more powerful than she is. She is holding me back!"

Padmé almost pales at the words, and Anakin falls to the floor, down on his knees, breathing heavenly and staring at his shaking hands through eyes full of traitorous tears. The female Senator rushes to his side, but doesn´t touch him, still too afraid of the violent display to even dare to embrace him, not knowing how the boy would react.

"What´s wrong?" she asks.

"I killed them…" He mutters through clenched teeth.

"Annie…?"

He raised his eyes to stare at her with renewed fury.

"I killed them all. I killed them all. They´re dead, every single one of them…"

Padmé only gapes at him with strange confused eyes, not saying a word and fighting to understand what he means.

"Not just the men… but the women and children too. They are like animals and I slaughtered them like animals… I hate them!"

There is a terrible silence after that. Anakin hides his face between his legs, like a child ashamed of his own actions, and a part of Padmé tells her that he is. Terribly guilty and terribly lonely, troubled and miserable and she can only wish to touch him, not his broken shaking body, but his very soul. The woman is insecure as well, not only in how to proceed by analyzing the Padawan´s words, how he confessed he killed, murdered those creatures, that, although not completely blameless, undeserving of such deaths. She thinks about his feelings for his Master. Obi-Wan, who suddenly appears in her mind as that kind and distanced Jedi, and, for once, the politician wonders how that woman, who always seemed so respectable and collected, has treated Anakin all these years. Was she kind? Was she warm? Or was completely cold towards Anakin? Padmé dares to think that the latter it´s not true. Jedi do keep their distance in relationships, that was known. They were cold but they were not cruel. They were stoic but not unmoved. They were strict but not unhuman. Anakin loves her too, he was so obvious about it, and she didn´t need his confession in Naboo to know it to be true. And that love couldn´t not be earned. She had to be special, kind and tender in some manner to win over Anakin´s young and impossible heart.

Anakin´s sobs interrupts Padmé´s musings and she finally approaches him to take him into her arms, to soothe him, replacing the real arms that she knows Anakin wants to be embraced by.

"Why do I hate them? I didn´t… I couldn´t control myself. I don´t want to hate them. But I can´t forgive them."

"To be angry is to be human."

"To control your anger is to be a Jedi" he refutes, his voice is dead though, monotone and unnatural, forcing the words out of his mouth and not believing a single thing they say.

"You are human" Padmé whispers in his hair, pitying the self-guilt that the young man must be feeling.

"No. I´m Jedi." He declares.

Padmé closes her eyes. "You are just like everyone else…" she thinks but never tells. Instead, she tightens her arms around his frame, kisses his head and almost cries alongside with him. She thinks that for the first time, she understands. She is finally able to understand how much and how bad Anakin feels and how cruel the Force must be, to give such an innocent person so much power, so much strength and still fill his life with infinite sadness.


The next day, they are all gathered around the new grave of Shmi Skywalker. Padmé stares at the sad image of Anakin kneeled in front of her mother´s final resting place, and Claigg, even when holding strong, seems trying hard to not drop tears. Padmé wouldn´t blame him if he did.

"I know wherever you are it has become a better place. You were the most loving partner a man could ever have. Goodbye, my dearest wife and thank you."

His words are honest and tender, the Senator could almost feel all the love attached to them. Anakin mutters something as well, but she is incapable to listen to the words. Some part of her is grateful for that too, she thinks it´s a private matter, something to be kept among them, a last goodbye and a new beginning for Anakin.

Before they can go back the homestead, R2D2 comes rolling and beeping with urgency, Padmé it´s instantly surprised to see her loyal droid coming in with such speed, especially when she instructed it to stay with the ship.

"Artoo, what are you doing here!?"

Anakin breaks his attention towards his mother´s grave to stare at the new coming droid with mascaraed interest, finally expressing something different than grief.

"It seems he is carrying a message from someone called Obi-Wan Kenobi. Does that mean anything to you, Master Anakin?" C3PO informs with a look at the blond Padawan.

Anakin´s eyes are suddenly big with surprise and he quickly picks himself off from the dirt to stand and coming close to the droid, Padmé follows him to reach her friend and founds the obvious worried face of the Jedi apprentice, he doesn´t say anything but she can almost feel the tension in his shoulders and his internal debate towards his own feelings. He´s still upset with his Master for her absence, but he is worried for her either way. Padmé directs him to her ship, so they can take the message in a private manner.

The minute they are on-board, Artoo transmits the message to them, what it shows them, it´s alarming. The minute the image of Anakin´s Master figure falls to the ground of whatever planet she was at the moment, the blond man whimpers and stands up, rushed. The message cuts out, indicating it´s finality, and that makes things much worse, for Anakin is suddenly frantic.

"I´m going after her!" he announces with such an alarmed voice that Padmé fears he would simultaneously start shivering in agitation like he did when he confessed the murder of the Tuskens to her.

"I thought the first thing she said was to retransmit her message to Coruscant." Padmé reminds him, gently.

"Yeah, you´re right. You´re right." Anakin relaxed a bit, driving a hand through his hair.

They quickly send the message to its destination, Mace Windu, as Anakin reminds her the Jedi Master that receives their call is named, ponders about the transmission before ordering Anakin to stay where he is to protect Padmé, to not rush to Obi-Wan, and that the Jedi will deal with Dooku themselves. Once the transmission it´s finished and a clear "Understood, Master" from Anakin, Padmé stares at the figure of the young man, as if expecting him to burst into one of his now common fits of emotion and to ignore the command of his superior in an attempt to pilot the small cruiser to Geonosis, but the boy doesn´t even move.

"They will never get there in time to save her." Padmé reminds him, as if to make him do something. Anything. "Geonosis it´s less than a parsec away from us, they have to come from the other half of the galaxy." Padmé moves to reach for the switches, preparing the ship to move.

Anakin stops her hand with a delicate move of his.

"If she still alive." He tells her.

"Annie, are you just going sit there and let her die?" Padmé gapes at him. Anakin doesn´t even meet her eyes. Padmé knew he was upset with Obi-Wan, but she never thought that he could ever abandon her like that. "Anakin, she is your mentor, your friend… your…" she stops, afraid to continue.

"…She is like my sister, but you heard Master Windu. He gave me strict orders to stay here." His voice is all wrong again. A deep monotone without feelings, without truth. Repeating a mantra in which he didn´t believe nothing at all. Padmé can see him now, what he was trying to do, he was dying to go running to free his Master, regardless of is anger and sadness, but he was afraid, afraid of himself. Afraid of him not being a good Jedi anymore, afraid of what he could do like what he did when he killed all those Tusken Raiders just a couple of days.

Padmé suddenly realizes that she can help him make up his mind.

"He gave you strict orders to protect me…" she says while switching the buttons right back on, bringing the ship to life.

Anakin stares at her with confusion.

"…and I´m going to save Obi-Wan. So if you plan to protect me, you will have to come along." She declares with a hidden smile on her face.

Anakin smirks and breathes a "thank you" under his breath, finally sitting right beside her to pilot the ship to where they need to go.


I´m back! I have neglected you all guys, and I´m sorry. I will be returning to school in a week so I can´t promise regular updates but I will be updating a couple of new chapters this week so make up for the long wait :) Also, we are about to end this fic, I think in a couple of chapters it will be done, but, do not fret! the next story of the series will be soon posted after that. This story will continue until the very end :)

Also, new art, this is Obi-Wan´s portrait with the flower arrangement (although it´s looks nothing like Gemma Artenton, which it´s the image I got when I picture Obi-Wan, so If you want to have a really flesh out image of Female Obi, then imagine Gemma with auburn hair and grey eyes.): post/148958762978/female-obi-wan-with-flowers-from-my-obikin

ALSO I HAVE A QUESTION FOR YOU GUYS: I want to name the flowers that Anakin gives to Obi-Wan in the last chapter, I want for you to suggest names for it and the one I like the most I will adopt as the name of the flowers from now on. :) They are blue (a cobalt shade combined with Gainsboro, which is a shade of grey) they are similar to roses but not quiet, they can grow a bit bigger too, the petals have like little soft spikes at the edges instead of being rounded and the center is white, so there you go. :)