Chapter Five

I find an unoccupied bench in the small sitting room of the Lars home to sleep on but, that sleep is hardly restful. Not only because the seat is too short for my long frame with only a thin cushion to separate me from the rough stone beneath, but because I'm plagued by nightmares. Again and again, I relive the dark events of my past that never happened but refuse to leave me in peace. When I snap open my eyes with a fitful gasp, Padme' is there seated across from me on a backless chair. She regards me with a solemn expression.

"You stayed," I whisper in surprise.

"You asked me to stay, remember?" she replies as if that should have been explanation enough for her continued presence. She simply cannot fathom why her desire to be anywhere near me would leave me baffled. "You were having a nightmare."

"I know." The reply comes with a careless shrug. Padme' is not so quick to dismiss it, however. Curiously, she seems more bothered by the fact than I am.

"Have you always had such bad dreams?"

I nod slowly. "For as long as I can remember."

"Is that why you don't sleep?" Another nod, though I'm wary about where this conversation is going. Too many questions can easily lead to an emotional intimacy with her that I would like to avoid. Her next question proves my instincts correct. "What do you dream about?"

I can't possibly answer that, for many reasons, and mostly because I lack the energy to engage in an evasive, verbal dance with her, I push myself upright, stretch to work the stiff kinks from my back and shoulders and ask how long I was asleep.

"Barely an hour," she says, "You could probably use more."

Ignoring that comment, I next ask after my mother. "Is she…?"

"She's alive," she quickly reassures me, "She's sleeping finally. The healer said that she's been through quite an ordeal, and that she needs plenty of rest. Cliegg is with her now."

"I should go too." But when I start to scoot to my feet, Padme' reaches out to place a steadying hand on my knee to waylay my efforts. "I want to see for myself that she's alright!" I insist fiercely when I discern her intention to hold me back, "Those animals brutalized her for weeks! She could have died!" She did die!

"I know that. I know. But you're dead on your feet, Anakin. You can't help her if you collapse." Reluctantly, I relax back against the bench with a defeated sigh, unable to argue with her logic. "When was the last time you ate anything? Are you hungry?"

"Are you offering to cook?"

I recall that her skills in the kitchen are somewhat nonexistent so the prospect of her preparing a meal for me, no matter how well intentioned, isn't exactly appealing. It isn't that she's a terrible cook, but she only knows a handful of dishes well enough to claim expertise and all of them had been Nubian delicacies. Everything else had been either hit or miss, mostly miss. I'm not expecting a meal fit for a king but something edible would be nice.

My unenthusiastic dismay over the matter must be detectable in my tone because Padme' laughs. "No, I'm not offering to cook for you," she assures me, "But it's good to know that the thought of it horrifies you so."

"Sorry…sorry…" But the small smile tugging at the corners of my mouth probably belies my supposed penitence.

"Beru made dinner earlier. I can bring you something."

"Yes. Thank you."

The meal is simple, really nothing beyond a cold bowl of stew and stale piece of bread. I'm so hungry, however, that is might as well be one of those elegant, five course dinners that had once been served at the grand charity galas the Senate used to have when the Republic still stood. Still stands, I correct myself mentally. It hasn't fallen yet. I can't say definitively that it won't fall at all as I'm still uncertain that sending Obi-Wan to Kamino this early in the game really changes anything.

I try to push the thought away and focus on my food. Unfortunately, that proves to be impossible with Padme' watching me intensely the entire time. As usual, I try not to squirm under her scrutiny but, eventually it becomes too much for me to ignore. I swallow my last mouthful and set my bowl aside.

"Why are you looking at me like that?"

"I'm worried about you," she whispers, "Anakin, what happened out there?"

I push away my empty bowl, finding difficulty meeting her eyes. "I told you. They were torturing her. I brought her home."

"Owen said that the Tuskens are a very violent, primitive species, and they don't typically leave their captives alive."

"No, they don't."

"But you knew. You knew your mother was alive."

"I felt her in the Force."

"And you knew where to find her," she continues apprehensively, as if I hadn't spoken at all, "You knew to come here and that…that she was married…and where to go… How did you know these things, Anakin?"

"It's…I…Padme', it's complicated."

"Yes, so you've said before," she replies tersely, "And I must be honest with you, Anakin. I didn't find the answer satisfying then and I don't find it to be so now. You owe me an explanation! Tell me what's going on!"

In theory, revealing the truth to her can be a rather uncomplicated action. I simply confess that a very old and very sacred Sith artifact had transported me back in time 13 years in the past. Now my 33-year-old psyche currently resides into my 19-year-old body, and I'm trying to thwart the formation of an evil empire that I helped to build. What is so extraordinary about that?

Even to me, the person who is currently living this nonsense, it sounds ridiculous! She will think that I've gone mad if I tell her the truth, and I wouldn't blame her. Notwithstanding the expected mystery that surrounds the Jedi Order and their mystical arts, I suspect that time travel might be too much for Padme' to grasp.

So, instead I tell her, "Sometimes I can see things before they happen. It's as simple as that." Not a complete fabrication, just a slight alteration of the truth.

"Are you telling me that you can see into the future?"

Her flat, dubious tone wrings a stunned laugh from me. "Well, when you say it like that, it sounds stupid."

"Anakin…"

"You asked me how I know. That's how I know."

"So, you know what's going to happen before it does? Fine! Give me a demonstration of this power. What am I going to say next?"

"It doesn't work like that, Padme'."

"Then how does it work?"

"I know events that are destined to occur."

"Events like what?"

I drop my eyes then, hesitant to say anything about the coming war or Palpatine's rise to power and the creation of his empire. I tell myself it's because she couldn't possibly process that incredible knowledge right now. It's too much for a non-Force sensitive to fathom. The truth behind my reluctance lies somewhere beneath that excuse. If I reveal to her any of the terrible things to come to pass, I will also have to confess my part in those things. I'm not ready to see that look of disgust in her eyes again. Not yet…

"Padme', I don't want to talk about this."

That response only heightens her already mounting anxiety. "Ani, you're frightening me! What exactly have you seen?" she bursts out and I can feel alarm radiating from her in electric waves, "It must be something truly terrible if you won't tell me!"

I'm spared the effort of urging her to let it go (something I know will prove to be a fruitless endeavor), when Owen Lars suddenly materializes from the back of the house and says, "Your mother's awake, son. She's asking for you."

Wordlessly, I follow him back to the small bedroom situated near the rear of the house. Owen and Beru are already there, situated in the far corner of the room. It appears that I was the last one to be summoned to her bedside. I try not to dwell on how that makes me feel and, instead, concentrate on my mother as I take the empty seat beside her bed.

She lies on a small, narrow bed adorned with a single blanket and a pillow. I'm overwhelmed by how tiny she looks, her paper-thin skin discolored and clinging to her bones after weeks of starvation. Bacta patches have helped to reduce some of the swelling from her face, but she is still in rough shape. Tears immediately spring to my eyes at the sight of her. I stubbornly blink them back. I refuse to convey anything other than strength for her now because that is what she needs from me.

The effort it takes to hold them back becomes more challenging when she turns her head to look at me and instantly smiles. "Ani," she breathes as I come to kneel at the bedside and sweep up her hand, "Look at you. You've grown up. You left a little boy, and you came back a man. My goodness, I've missed so much…"

My throat burns with the effort it takes to keep my tears at bay. "I'm so sorry, Mom. I'm sorry I didn't come for you like I promised. I should have been here."

"You were where you needed to be. You've always been destined for better things than Tatooine…"

"Nothing is better than you," I insist fiercely. My words aren't lip service either. I mean them with every fiber of my being. "I wish I had never left you…"

"Don't say things like that!" she admonishes me in a surprising show of strength, "You're a Jedi. You're doing what you were meant to do. I've always known it."

"I'm not a Jedi yet, Mom. I'm not sure if I ever will be."

"You will," she predicts with a knowing smile.

Her dark eyes roam fervidly over my face, and I imagine that she's processing the changes that have occurred since the last time she saw me. Her scrutiny, much like Padme's, unnerves me. It is almost as if she can see beyond my youthful visage down to the jaded, damaged man I've become. I'm inclined to think that she can because her smile gradually becomes tempered with sadness.

"Oh, my little Ani…it pains me to see you look so lost…"

I press a fervent kiss to her fingers and force a smile. "You shouldn't worry about me. I'm fine. You need to rest."

"He's right, Mother," Owen says. The sound of his voice startles me because, for a moment I've forgotten that there was anyone else in the room with us. But I quickly get over that shock when I note how he addresses my mother…as if she's his own. "There will be plenty of time for reunions later. You should sleep now."

"I can sleep when I'm dead," she grunts.

"That is not funny!" Cliegg, Owen and I exclaim simultaneously. The three of us exchange a look of silent commiseration.

My mother only croaks a weak laugh over our mutual outburst, however. "How can I possibly sleep when I finally have my entire family together at last?"

"And it only took you being kidnapped by the Tuskens to make that happen," Beru teases her, "You never do anything by half, do you, Shmi?"

"Well, you know me, Beru. I have always had a flair for the dramatic…"

Owen steps forward to press an affectionate kiss to her forehead and I try not to be bothered by the easy show of familiarity. It's not that I'm unhappy that my mother managed to go on with her life after I left Tatooine. I hadn't wanted her to live an existence filled with misery. Far from it. I had wanted her to gain her freedom and live the life she was meant to live. But I hadn't quite expected for her to replace me with a new family, a new son either. Despite my mother's earlier words, I'm not quite sure how I fit into this new family unit she's created for herself or if I do at all. The realization stings a little.

"Get some sleep," he tells her with a stern look, "We'll talk more in the morning."

"Of course."

After he and Beru say their goodnights and take their leave, Cliegg continues to linger in the bedroom and so do I. My mother bounces a drowsy look between us. "Do you both plan on keeping watch tonight?" she asks wryly.

"That's the plan," I say before directing a questing look over at Cliegg, "If that's alright with you, sir."

He nods his consent. "I'd like you to stay."

We assume our mutual vigil on opposite sides of the bed, neither of us speaking at all as we watch my mother drift off to sleep. Only when her breathing is deep and even does Cliegg Lars break the silence. I notice for the first time that his rheumy eyes are gleaming with unshed tears.

"Thank you for bringing her back to me," he utters gruffly.

"Don't thank me for that. She is my mother, after all. Going after her was the only choice I had."

He must sense the underlying censure in my tone, the affront that he would expect anything less from me because he says, "I surely thought that you wouldn't come back at all, much less bring her with you. It's a miracle as far as I'm concerned."

Because saying, "You're not the first person to underestimate my power," seems beyond arrogant given the circumstances, I decide to settle with a simple, "I wasn't going to come back without her." And it's true. Whether dead or alive, I had been determined to bring my mother back to her home.

"You must be a very powerful Jedi to face the Tuskens on your own."

"I'm not a Jedi."

I don't make the denial out of modesty but simple, irrefutable fact. I'm not a Jedi. Then again, I'm not a Sith either. For so long, I've defined myself as one thing or the other and it feels strange to recognize in this moment that I am neither. Truthfully, I'm not sure what I am anymore…or who. The identities that had once defined me…Shmi Skywalker's son, Obi-Wan Kenobi's padawan, Padme' Amidala's husband and even Darth Sidious' dark apprentice…those personas are gone now. Wiped away in the tide of my rapidly shifting past. I'm forging a new identity now; one I am only just beginning to understand.

But I don't expect Cliegg Lars to make sense of that inner turmoil. He only regards me in confusion following my contradictory reply. "But your mother said that-,"

"—I'm still a padawan," I explain to him, "A Jedi in training."

"Then that's even more impressive that you took on the Tuskens by yourself," he grunts, "Grown men have accomplished less!"

"Does it really matter? She was still taken! She almost died!"

"And that's not your doing," Cliegg says, "You shouldn't blame yourself for what happened. Shmi wouldn't want that."

I'm not in the mood to argue that point, and so I smoothly change the subject instead. "How long have you and my mother been married?"

I realize in hindsight that is something I never knew in the first timeline, never even thought to ask about. In the aftermath of my mother's death, those details hadn't mattered very much. The Lars had been little more than strangers to me. The one thing that connected us was our shared grief over a woman who had impacted our lives in remarkable ways, but that hadn't been enough to forge an actual familial bond between us. I suppose that is going to change now. And, as a result, I find myself curious to know details that I hadn't pondered before.

"It will be five years soon. She's one of the best things that has ever happened to me."

"You freed her."

"I did. And then she made it her life's work to free others," he replies, smiling, "Your mother is an incredible woman."

"She's been helping to free the slaves?" I breathe out in surprise, "Really?"

Somehow though, I'm not surprised to hear that my mother decided to take that virtuous task into her own hands. After all, she had been the one to instill in me the firm conviction that no person should be another's property in the first place. I feel a pang of shame over the fact that I hadn't been here to help her. And I should have been.

Cliegg nods proudly. "She built a device to deactivate the chips," he recounts, "Used it for the first time on herself. I thought I was going to have a heart attack because we weren't even sure if she'd survive the process at all. It was experimental. But your mother is fearless."

"I know."

"You get that from her. I can tell. You have that same determined look in your eyes."

I glance away from him then, heartened by the notion that he can see my mother reflected so clearly in me especially when I had been so sure that everything I was had been consumed by darkness. But I'm also a little flustered at the implied intimacy of his comment, by how well he knows my mother. I can't quite squelch the jealousy I feel at knowing he's had years to grow closer to her while I've become a virtual stranger in contrast.

It's possible my thoughts are playing across my features rather plainly because Cliegg says to me, "She never forgot about you, Anakin. She never gave up the hope that she would see you again. She's been waiting for you to come home all these years."

"She shouldn't have had to wait so long," I mutter, my words choked with shame, "I should have come back sooner."

"You're here now. That's all that matters, son."