"Anakin, please, please stop crying. Please."
But honestly you wanted to cry too. This wasn't the life you had imagined either, but now it was and you would have to live with it. You were tired, you wanted to sleep and you just wanted some peace and quiet for once. However you couldn't fault him for crying, not with all the noise the next door neighbours made.
So you just kept on gently swaying him in your arms and waited for him to have cried his little heart out. You were ought to be used to it by now at least you thought so, everything concerning this situation wasn't quite as it should be. For one, he should have been in Shmi's arms, and he shouldn't have to be stuck in a cramped apartment complex.
It had been half a year since the boy in your arms had become a part of your life. No, since he had become your life. None of this had ever been your first choice, neither reincarnation nor Tatooine or suddenly raising the destined savior of the galaxy. But you two only had each other and you wouldn't fail him. But sometimes you still couldn't help but wonder how your life had gotten to this point, it was still hard to believe that all of this was real.
After first arriving on Naboo you only had to live out of your ship for a week before securing a place to live in Therea, a central city of Naboo and just about as far as one could be from Theed.
You managed to rent a small apartment fairly quickly for someone originally off-world.
However,, everything was possible if you just had enough credit reserves and that you did, if one could account for your left over savings from your jobs with Gardulla. You could even have gotten a bigger apartment in a better part of town but you decided not to. That money would eventually run out and hen what? So instead you chose a smaller and cheaper one, one you could pay for longer if you weren't able to get a steady job as soon as you wanted. Yet the smallness didn't deter you from turning it into something you could love one day.
You spent many hours, in which Anakin slept, setting up decorations which once upon a time would have seemed like something out of an art catalogue. Here on Naboo everything was beautiful and lifely, which you sometimes still couldn't wrap your head around. So you turned your apartment into your own brand beauty, combining conform Nabooian influences with your tokens of Tatooine.
Your favorite room was the one you were in now, Anakin's nursery. In here you had put up the two little nightlights you had taken with you when you left your home. They closely resembles Tatooine's twin suns and had once basked your own bedroom in a warm glow. Now they were Anakin's.
If you were anyone else you could have supposed you'd settled in nicely on Naboo but this wasn't the case for you, because if you had to be honest this wasn't home yet. Not when you could see the looks people wore on their faces as soon as you opened your mouth to and spoke, your voice betraying your Tatooinian accent. Their eyes would just widen slightly and their smile would shrink just a bit. while you couldn't read their thought, you didn't need to, it was obvious they were looking down on you. Outer Rim trash just because you were born just a few planets away.
Life wasn't fair and you never expected it to be, so you used their bias to your advantage and instead tried your luck in the Cantinas. Playing Pazaak had been something you'd learned while interacting with Gardulla's rather special clientele, the perfect way to get the scoop on local gossip and to earn some nice amounts of credits if you had a talent for card games. It wasn't long after that you made contact with the right kind of people, just being the right amount of shady to hire you even with your 'lower background'. They were the kind of people who'd hire you because they could see the dangerous glint in your eyes even when you smiled at the waiters in the Cantinas. Even a planet as beautiful as Naboo had it's rotten parts and you would take full advantage of them.
A door slammed faintly in the distance and Anakin ceased his crying, quiet finally settling over the bedroom. Your neighbours must at last have went off to their jobs. A few minutes passed until the redness disappeared from Anakin's face and his eyes fell shut, his consciousness claimed by sleep. You would just stay here for a bit. Just a bit until you had to leave this small oasis of peace.
Just something to hold on to. That was all you asked for.
Had your mother thought these thoughts too when she held you in her arms? The image this planted in your mind was painful and something inside you seethed. You shouldn't miss her. But how could you not when you were a mother now in all but name?
A whimper ripped you out of your thoughts and your eyes fell towards the source as you tightened your hold on him. Anakin steered a little at the contact, his hands twisting into tight fists, and you sighed.
You couldn't ever tell him that those nightmares were your fault, that they were the force's way of rectifying things and sending him on his true path. You could feel it in your bones, the horrid taste the force left on your tongue, a taste you had last tasted in the hours of his birth. You knew those dreams couldn't be anything but the force's doing. However, you wouldn't let them claim him. You couldn't, because you knew what that path would entail for Anakin, there would be nothing but pain and suffering entailed for him.
This was your son and not their savior.
This galaxy would only fall back into despair after he sacrificed his life, his happiness, his everything for it. He deserved so much more than that, he deserved an actual life far away from the puppeteers that would control his strings just because of a prophecy.
For now you would be holding this doomed child in your arms until the day he would tell you to let go. Only then.
AN: And so we are at the introduction of what will be the Naboo arc! Next time we see Reader and Anakin, he'll be five already and show the first strong inklings of his foce sensitivity :) Next chapter will be added tomorrow ✌️
Lgapwookie: I'm glad that you like it so far :) Thank you for commenting!
Leo's reading: Thanks for your comment! This story will actually involve time skips, but for now we'll just stay for a bit with young Anakin. But older Anakin will get a lot of screen time later on, don't worry ;)
