The first year of his life, Anakin spends strapped to his mother's chest or her back, or in her arms. Every time Shmi tries to put him down or walk away, he cries and cries and cries. When Shmi is made to go back to work – too soon, too tired, and too achingly aware of Anakin to do much good, but the Hutts are cruel and this is her punishment for having a child without their permission or knowledge – Shmi leaves him with the other children – children who are too young or too weak to work. People Anakin otherwise likes try to hold him without his mother near, and he screams and cries, and he doesn't stop until Shmi comes back, takes him in her arms.
"My sky-walker," Shmi coos. "What am I going to do with you?" Anakin does not answer. He is two weeks old, after all, but Shmi straps her still sleeping son to her chest after another week of Anakin crying until he is reunited with his mother each night. She works with Anakin staring up at her. He stays silent as she serves Gardulla, cleans the slime trails she leaves behind with Anakin's head pressed firmly against her breast, her knees and back aching with the added weight, but Shmi does not mind. Anakin smiles and watches his mother intently.
When Shmi had become pregnant with Anakin, it had been the first time she had thought about the Force in years. Her friends, the other slaves, even the Hutts, were all convinced that Anakin was a gift of the Force. A miracle. There were other, more obvious solutions (they seemed to believe all at once) to Shmi's mysterious pregnancy, but no one doubted that Anakin was a miracle from the moment he was conceived. All life on Tatooine was a miracle, after all, Hatore remarked. No one, except Shmi, who, after she got over the shock, the impossibility of it, wept. A child born into slavery. A child who would know no happiness. But Shmi could not get rid of the child, no matter how much she wanted to. She wept when she thought of his future, but Hatore reminded her of the stories of the Chosen One every slave on Tatooine and across the Galaxy had heard. And when Shmi remembered the boy from her dreams, she knew that though the Galaxy may not lover her son, she was determined to do so. Eventually, Shmi agrees; Anakin is a miracle – a gift of the Force.
But it is not until Anakin is born and placed into her arms that Shmi knows the Force. The first time Anakin opens his eyes, the Galaxy lights up around her. The lifeforms surrounding Shmi seem warmer, brighter somehow. Tatooine is alive in a way that it hadn't been in the moment before.
Shmi feels the anticipation of those around her as her own, the distress of her son cutting clean through her, leaving her breathless, winded. Her mind quiets as Anakin falls asleep against her.
Shmi knows her son can use the Force, can feel the Force. She thinks he must use it to protect her from the Hutts. She hasn't know the touch of a whip since Anakin was born. The thought of it makes her stomach churn, the idea that her infant son knows the Hutts are bad and will hurt them, that he can protect her from dangers Shmi knows she will not be able keep away from him for long. She hopes that instinct will save him when he's older, but Shmi's new connection to the Force –or maybe just dread, cold and dead like the hearts of burnt out stars – tells her otherwise.
She is sick the moment she realizes Anakin can feel her the way she can feel him. Anakin is bright, a beacon of light and warmth –no matter how far, Shmi always knows where is and what he is doing. She knows if he is hungry or needs to be changed a moment before Anakin starts to cry. She knows when her son is happy, when he sad, when he is scared.
Shmi realizes that if she can feel when Anakin is afraid – the blind nameless terror of an infant without words or knowledge, just his mother and the rest of the galaxy – then Anakin must feel Shmi's fear. And Shmi is afraid. She cannot think for the fear sometimes; fear for herself, her friends, her son most of all. What would happen to Anakin, uncooperative, moody, attached to Shmi like a limb, if something were to happen to her? What will happen to him as he gets older? They may be sold, separated, killed at a master's whim. Will the Jedi come for her child? Would she let them take him? (Of course she would, Shmi says to herself, shaking at her selfishness. They could take Anakin and leave her to die if it meant a life – a free life, a life on any planet in the galaxy besides Tatooine.) All that fear, Anakin feels as his own. She fears she cannot protect him, but no child should have to bear the fears of his mother.
Anakin starts to use to Force with demonstrable purpose around five months old. He moves a rag doll –takes it from one of the other children, right out of her surprised hands, into his. The other child, about two, starts to cry, and Anakin smiles for only a second before he drops the doll and starts crying too.
Shmi's heart skips a beat as she watches the doll fly across the room. She looks around the room, panicked that they are not alone. If anyone sees - if anyone knows who Anakin really is, if the Hutts find out how she came to have a son at all -Shmi is sure they would not let him stay here with her. She is sure they would kill him for being the Chosen One, for one day maybe overthrowing their slave empire, or for one day maybe inciting other slaves to rebel against them. Shmi scoops Anakin up and hands the girl the doll back. Anakin's sobs dissolve into laughter and he rests his head on Shmi's chest, making the doll wave playfully at the other child.
It was only the three of them in the room. It's Shmi's turn to watch the children, but it is only Anakin and this little girl who are left in Gardulla's household. No one saw. No one yet knows of Anakin's power, that he will free the slaves, that he will free himself and his children, and if Shmi is lucky enough to live that long, he will free her too. Shmi sighs. "What am I going to do with you, my sky-walker?" Shmi wonders aloud, cradling his head. Anakin babbles a response, paying more attention to the girl than his mother. The doll flies into the air and back down into the girl's hands, and both children laugh.
Before Anakin is born, Shmi begins to piece together a small holo-mobile out of old bits of scrap metal. It takes her over a year, and Anakin is already two months old by the time it's ready and can already distinguish shapes and colors and is, all and all, a pretty good sleeper. Shmi hangs it up above his crib anyway (and it's barely a crib and it belongs to the Hutts, like Shmi, like Anakin), and Anakin stares at it for hours. It's meant to sing and project holograms of planets and star systems and starships, but the pictures are glitchy and Shmi couldn't get the broken pieces to do much more whine, so Shmi never turns it on, but as long as Anakin is watching it, it rotates slowly, though he seems to be more fascinated with the clicking of the machinery than anything else.
One night, Shmi wakes up to a soft twinkling sound by Anakin's crib and a light twinkling sound in the Force that tells her that Anakin is awake but doesn't need anything. He does not want to wake Shmi, and he doesn't make a sound, so Shmi turns over on her side to watch him. Eyes as big and bright as Tatooine's twin suns stare up at the steady rotation of the mobile, and it takes Shmi a few breathless seconds before she realizes that the mobile is playing the twinkling music, the machinery clicking solidly into place. Anakin turns his eyes towards his mother.
"Anakin," she sighs. Anakin makes a soft noise at the sound of his name. "Did you fix the mobile?" In vivid color, planets stars, moons, starships dance above Anakin. "Did you get it to work?" Anakin makes no answer. He closes his eyes and falls asleep. The twinkling in the Force dies off a little, but the twinkling from the holo-mobile continues until Shmi gets up to switch it off.
Shmi saves her stipend, which is less than a credit a week to be used for emergencies (extra food, material for clothes, so the Hutts don't have to bother) to buy Anakin a present for his first birthday. He is long, lean, bright-eyed, and Shmi can finally put him down and leave a room without him crying. To survive a whole year on Tatooine is something to be celebrated so Shmi buys Anakin something soft; something different than everything on Tatooine and the sand and the clothes they wear, the blankets they sleep on – a cloth doll, a stuffed bantha. Shmi hopes it will keep Anakin from stealing the other children's toys.
Anakin wakes up early on his first birthday. He knows three or four words, speaks rapidly in spite of his general unintelligibility. It doesn't matter to Shmi. Anakin babbles to Shmi as she works, copying sounds in Huttese and Basic. He says "Mama" and "No" in both languages with clarity, and now, on his first birthday, Anakin is up with the first sun and is babbling away, just to see if anyone is listening.
Shmi picks Anakin up and the Force lights up between them.
"Mama, Mama," says Anakin giddily, twisting his little hands into Shmi's hair.
"Good morning, my sky-walker," Shmi says, planting a kiss on Anakin's cheek. He giggles and returns the favor messily. "I have something for you Anakin," she says. "But we must be quiet and let the others sleep." Shmi holds her finger to her lips and Anakin tries to copy here. The slave quarters hum with the quietness of restful sleep. "Good," she says, plopping Anakin down on her bed. From underneath, she retrieves the stuffed bantha. When Anakin sees it, he starts babbling again, and Shmi has to tighten her grip a little to stop it from flying out of her hands toward him.
Anakin's face goes red with frustration and the Force buzzes irritably around him. "Mama," he groans. He reaches for the bantha. "Mama."
Shmi scoops Anakin into her lap and sits on the bed with him. He grabs the toy and whacks it across Shmi's lap playfully. He is laughing good-naturedly, and he is no longer paying attention to Shmi. Anakin has one of the bantha's leg in his mouth, chewing it absently.
"We must be more careful about the Force, Anakin," she murmurs, smoothing Anakin's peach fuzz of hair. "The Hutts will not like how powerful you are." Anakin gurgles, taking the bantha's foot out of his mouth for long enough to stare up at Shmi with big blue eyes, and to try to press the slimy toy into Shmi's hands. He does not know the Force from anything else, he does not know – how could he? – how powerful he is, how special he is, and how much danger that puts him in. For now, Anakin has survived his first year, a miracle in itself on Tatooine, and he is happy enough in the early morning to sit in his mother's arms, the Force alive and sparkling between them.
A/N: This will probably be around ten chapters, one for every year Anakin lives on Tatooine, with the intention of getting to know Shmi and everything that Anakin thought of his mother. There will be delays between updates because I have to go back to school soon, but it will get finished now that I've started it.