Week 2: Joy

Which is ironic because I cried the entire way through crying this.


A/N: If you're thinking! Hey didn't I already read this! You are correct. I just moved the chapter because my initial reaction (see A/N2 at the end) for it to be closer to Christmas was correct and I was supposed to save Joy for the third week of advent, which is today (Gaudete Sunday). Anyway, the whole shape will work better now, and also my weeks are right.


Shmi smiles as she dies.

This is something that Anakin will remember forever, though the memory is cloudy and faint with grief, and it makes it harder for him to bear that his mother was happy when she greeted death. Yet still, Shmi smiles as she dies.

It's Anakin's face –the face from her dreams. He looks nothing like he did when she last saw him, but she recognizes him the moment he enters the tent, she knows he's coming the second he enters Tatooine's atmosphere. His hands, larger than hers now, gentle and firm around her wrist, his lips pressed desperately to her hand.

She blinks blearily up at him, at his beautiful face, his short hair still blond and his eyes still gloriously blue. He looks just like he does in her dreams –the ones she's been having since before he was born. She reaches her hand up weakly to touch his face, one last time. Her pain melts away and she can feel Anakin's mind at the edge of hers, purposeful now, unlike when he was young. He's speaking, his voice soft, unsure, tinged with the unfamiliar cadence of the Core Worlds. Shmi can't hear what he's saying, but she's glad that he's here. She wants him to stop crying, wants to take away his pain.

"I am so proud of you," Shmi whispers. Anakin's lip trembles, and with it the Force. She's missed him and the Force. She can only sense it when he's near her. But she doesn't need the Force to tell her that Anakin has done everything the Force has asked him to and more. That he is the most remarkable, most talented young Jedi the galaxy will ever see. Her heart fills with love, and everything but Anakin melts away, her pain a distant memory already. She rejoices, as she dissipates into the Force. "Now I am complete," she whispers. It's for Anakin, so that he knows. He must know. She can't leave him here without him knowing.

"Mom–" Anakin chokes, and Shmi wishes she had more time with him. Her son. Her beautiful, radiant, grown-up son. "Please."

He must know. "I love you," Shmi tells him, smiling. The last thing she sees is Anakin's face. He will cry and grieve, but he must know. Shmi dies happy, her son cradling her in his arms, determined to make the whole world right, to save her. She needs him to know that he doesn't have to –he already has.


Darth Vader does not have a mother. (There are many things he once had, as another man, which he does not have now –a mother being only one among many. Darth Vader does not have a wife, an apprentice, a family.) It is the price of being a Sith Lord. Most don't bother with Vader's past, assuming he's a droid, a monster, something created out of chaos instead of born and raised –instead of a man. They're not wrong, so he doesn't bother correcting them. And it does him no good to remember her. The brief anger and pain it causes him is not enough to sustain him. The risk of remorse too high.

It does Vader no good to remember his mother, but he cannot forget her.

When he was young, it was all he could do not to think of the moment she died. When he put on the suit, his actions towards the sand people became the moment he recognized himself as Darth Vader. A moment so soaked in rage he can barely remember. The death of each Tusken he killed tasted sweet in the Force, and Vader aches to feel something as wonderful as that bloodshed again.

That memory leaves him bitter and empty now, leads him ultimately back to the moment she died. How empty the galaxy became, how unbearable. Vader remembers how weak and stupid Anakin was, rejoices that he is not that man anymore. Pretends he isn't.

Darth Vader does not have a mother, but he remembers Anakin's mother's funeral, the sand slipping between his fingers futilely. A promise so far away from his grasp. Darth Vader is glad he has no mother. She would surely be disappointed in the disaster of Anakin Skywalker's life, and she had thought so highly of him, thought he would do so much, Vader recalls. (They all did, Vader remembers. If he could still laugh, he would. Anakin couldn't so much as tie his shoes without calling on his master for help. How could he save the galaxy?) A mother would be a distraction, a hindrance. Vader is glad that he does not have a mother.

Darth Vader is very good at pretending. The life of Anakin Skywalker is of no consequence to him. His mother, his master, his apprentice, his wife. None of them mean anything to Vader anymore. He has the Empire convinced, he has the Rebellion convinced. He has those closest to them –even the Emperor himself –convinced. He has convinced himself most surely of all. No whispers of Darth Vader's feelings from the silence of his isolation chamber. And Darth Vader is a much better liar than Anakin Skywalker ever was.

Not long after the Skywalker boy blows up the Death Star, Vader goes to Tatooine to find answers. Kenobi hid him there, with Anakin's step-brother, and Vader never bothered to look, to come back. He resents being here now, the sand in his joints making it hard to walk, the tiniest pit of anxiety forming in his heart that he'll break down completely if he stays here too long.

The homestead Anakin once visited has barely finished smoldering when Vader arrives back on Tatooine. The bodies of the boy's aunt and uncle charred, twisted, and undeniably dead. Vader feels nothing for the people Anakin might have called family, although he buries them alongside Shmi and her husband, and her husband's first wife. All the names except Anakin's mother's escape Vader's memory. The sensors in his hands are nothing like the nerves of flesh, and Vader thinks his time on Tatooine wasted if not sentimental as he traces Shmi's name, carved in basic in sand-stone, with his gloved tech-hand. It does nothing, except to remind him of how weak Anakin was. He loved Shmi so dearly, and yet here she lay, dead as a doornail.

Vader looks back at the remains of the homestead. He does not think of the life Anakin's mother had here, or the life his son had. He cannot think of the life he could have had. He touches Shmi's grave again, does not wish that he could see her again, does not feel the faintest (the tiniest –oh, if Vader would have felt it at all, he could have easily missed it) glimmer of joy when he pictures her face.


When Anakin dies, the first person he sees is his mother, and at first he is terrified. He is small again, eight or nine, and his mother is taller than he is and very far away. Shmi wasn't Force sensitive in life, Anakin remembers. When he found out what Obi-Wan was doing on Tatooine (communing with the Force, with Qui-Gon, learning the secret to immortal life, all nonsense, the Emperor assured him –Obi-Wan was nothing more than a crazy old man), he knew it was possible. Obi-Wan appeared to him, to Luke, to guide them. Anakin expected Obi-Wan to be the first person he saw in the afterlife; he never expected to see his mother.

It is good to see her, almost unbearably good. And small as he is, he cannot help but throw himself in her arms, the sensation strange, detached, but Shmi is both warm and cool and quiet like he remembers, and she is very calm as she embraces him back. For a moment, Anakin is sure that he is not dead, that he only has more suffering ahead of him, but then Shmi speaks.

"Oh Anakin," she whispers, brushing Anakin's bangs out of his face. Her voice is the same lilting, accented basic that Anakin remembers from his childhood. "Oh I was so scared that you had lost yourself, Ani. I am so happy to see you." Shmi's eyes are warm, and Anakin is safe. He lets himself enjoy the comfort for a moment longer.

When he pulls away he twenty-something. The age he was when he died. And Anakin, too, is happy.


A/N: Little known fact about me is that I love Darth Vader. And yet this is the FIRST time I've ever even tried to do some Vader voice. I've done Anakin to the moon and back and also Vaderkin, but I've never done just straight Vader.

A/N2: Also, the last part I kind of wanted to save for closer to Christmas, because as I was writing this I started thinking about the shape of this as a whole story. When I did my Narnia Calendar last year they were four unconnected stories, but...turns out that's not what's going to happen this year and this last part actually fits in nicely with the final part I had planned to write anyway. But you get it now. The good news: anidala next week. Even more good news: in a few weeks, after I finish Sky-Walker, I will be posting ANOTHER star wars fic, but just a one-shot, which I guess the theme of which should be a secret until I actually start writing it.