Anakin goes to see Stryka for about a year, but they don't go often. They leave before dusk, as soon as Watto sends them home, stay through the night, and leave at dawn. Shmi is grateful for whatever help Stryka is providing, whatever peace she can give her son. Peace is safety for Anakin. And it seems to be helping, the meditation practice that Shmi spends long hours doing with Anakin when they can't make it to Stryka's. If he's no less angry, at least he's less likely to use the Force to help him express it.
They leave right from Watto's. Anakin is nearly nine. In the last year, he's grown another three inches. His clothes hang loose off his body, and his pants barely cover is ankles. Shmi hasn't had time to get him new boots, so he's barefoot as they trek across the desert. It's not so bad here, just outside of Mos Espa, but they'll be among the rocks soon, and Anakin is almost too big for Shmi to carry. Anakin won't complain, just slip his hand in Shmi's and look forward, squinting into the twin sunset.
Anakin freezes when they're still far enough away from Stryka's hut that the smoke rising in the distance could be from a fire to keep the cold out. His hand slips out of Shmi's, and Shmi is several paces ahead before she turns to see Anakin looking forward, following the smoke trail with his eyes. "Mom," he whispers. "Something's wrong." And as much as Shmi would like to ignore him, assure him there's nothing wrong, Anakin has that far-away look in his eyes that means the Force is warning him about something that no normal human would be able to tell. Shmi grabs his hand and drags him the rest of the way. It's too late to turn back now, even if Stryka's home is overrun with whatever desert-fiend attacked her. Shmi hopes it isn't the Hutts.
Stryka's house is still smoldering when they reach it. Shmi's heart sinks. She needs to see the inside, to see if whoever was here took Stryka with them, or if they left her here. She doesn't want to take Anakin inside, if her body is there, but she can't leave him out here in the open.
"Sand people?" Anakin asks, surveying the remains of Stryka's home. Shmi hopes so, if only because it means they have probably moved on. If the Hutts sent someone out here, they're probably waiting around for anyone Stryka may have colluded with. Shmi turns to Anakin, struggling to decide how much danger he is in staying out here while she looks for Stryka. "Mom, I think it was the sand people."
"I hope you're right, Ani," Shmi says, low enough she's not sure Anakin heard her. Anakin, his hand still wrapped in hers, leads them to Stryka's door. He looks up at Shmi expectantly. Shmi takes a deep breath. "Wait right here, Ani," she whispers. "If you see anything, come in, and keep your eyes closed."
"I've seen a dead body before, Mom," Anakin reminds her.
Shmi doesn't want to think too much about that, even though he has. Sometimes the streets of Mos Espa are riddled with them, and Anakin's been to the cantina with Watto, and he's always in those damned races, where there's at least one poor soul crushed off to the side of the track before the end. It doesn't mean that this death would be easier, it doesn't mean that Shmi relishes the idea of displaying another one to her young son. It doesn't make the matter-of-fact tone Anakin reminds her in any easier to stomach. Shmi cradles Anakin's face in one hand. She swallows her reassurance that Stryka might not be dead. They both know she is.
"For me," Shmi insists instead, and Anakin is old enough now to be annoyed with his mother, but young enough that he still listens to her.
"I'll keep watch," he offers nobly, turning his back to the door. "Call me in when you're ready. It's gonna get cold out here soon." Anakin crosses his arms over his chest, daring whoever is out there still to come and get him. Even though he's still only eight, Shmi would have second thoughts about messing with him, based just on the set of his shoulders.
Inside Stryka's hut is worse than the outside. The smoke was coming from Stryka's charred body, but the fire has mostly burned itself out. Nothing much flammable in this hut. Her possessions are missing or strewn about, but Stryka didn't have much in valuables –no food, water, or money, nothing much for gangsters or Raiders to take. Shmi can't tell if it was Hutts or Tuskens, but it doesn't matter. Whoever it was, is long gone, and they don't have much of a choice now, either way. Shmi pulls the one blanket left off of Stryka's now-useless bed, and covers her body with it. She swallows some bile.
"Ani," she calls, and Anakin turns on his heel at her voice and comes inside to survey Stryka's ruined home.
Anakin inhales sharply as her examines what remains of his teacher. He turns his head away so Shmi can't see the tears starting to flow.
"I'm so sorry, Anakin," Shmi offers helplessly, taking his hands, pulling him away from Stryka's body. "Don't look."
"I'm okay, Mom," Anakin chokes, still looking, craning his neck around to get a view. He wipes his tears away with his sleeve. He wriggles out of Shmi's clasp and sits cross-legged on the ground facing Stryka. "I'm okay," he repeats. Shmi comes to sit behind him, and Anakin leans into her, closing his eyes. There's not much coming off him – Stryka taught him basic shielding techniques so Shmi isn't as in tune with Anakin's every thought and feeling as she once was. Even still – Anakin is motionless, expressionless, but he's much smaller than she remembers him being a few moments ago.
They have to stay – there's nothing they can do about it now. The trek across the desert at night is perilous, and even if they could face the cold and the dark, they would be no match for the Tusken Raiders and all other sorts of creatures who couldn't brave the heat of day. And as the night grows darker and colder, Anakin moves closer into Shmi, and his shields start to crumble a little, his grief a palpable thing in the room with Stryka's corpse. It's in the corner, slimy and looming, and Shmi doesn't know what to do for her son except stroke his hair.
It is, though, the first time she's felt his grief, his fear, without a physical manifestation from the Force –or else, one that she notices. There's a slight draft, and Shmi attributes the fluttering of flimsi and fabric to the wind coming in through the door and windows. The suns rise, and with it, the slimy, greasy feeling that smeared itself on everything during the night abates – drawing away from where the light hits. Shmi doesn't think too hard about where it's receding to. She just picks up her shivering son – long, gangly legs and all –and walks back across the desert, praying to any god left in the galaxy that this adventure hasn't made everything worse for Anakin, who dozes fitfully on her shoulder under the heat of the twin suns.
Anakin is adamant about practicing what Stryka taught him. He sits, night after night, his eyes scrunched up on the floor, worrying holes into his pants. Shmi sits with him, after a few weeks. Anakin is crying silently, and Shmi's heart twinges.
"I can't do it," he mutters irritably. "I don't remember how."
"It doesn't matter, Anakin," Shmi promises. The same dark, greasy presence from the night they found Stryka is lurking in the corner, and in the last few weeks, Shmi has come to recognize that as a precursor for a meltdown, when Anakin is too tired to keep his shields up, when he lets everything in and everything out.
"It does matter," he insists, his eyes scrunched closed, his face screwed up like he was in pain. "Stryka always said it was important –the most important thing I could learn how to do."
"What did she teach you?" Shmi asks. She knows what she asked Stryka to teach him, but she also asked for her to be careful not to let Anakin know too much about why. Stryka promised it wouldn't be a problem. She would only teach him things that could be taught to non-Force-Sensitives. Things Jedi-Initiates learned at the Temple when they were still young. (Shmi never asked how she knew so much about the Force, how she knew so much about the Jedi. Privacy is important on Tatooine. She wishes, now, she knew more about Anakin's tutor.)
"To be quiet, to be strong," he murmurs, reaching up to wipe his tears. "But I – I don't remember how I did it with her. She said if I didn't learn, I wouldn't be safe." His eyes snap open. "If I didn't you wouldn't be safe."
"I am perfectly safe," Shmi assures him. The last rays of sun are glinting in through the little window, framing Anakin in a hazy, golden halo, and Shmi wishes she could focus on that, instead of whatever darkness she could only just see in her peripheral vision, lurking in the corner. Wishes she could believe what she said to him. "And you are strong," she promises. "And Stryka helped you for a while, right?"
Anakin shrugs. Shmi gathers him in her arms. "Yes," Shmi answers for him, as Anakin cries into her shoulder. "She helped you, even if you don't think she did."
"How do you know?" Anakin sniffles.
Shmi ignores the shadows creeping around them, tells herself it's the setting suns. She'll have to get up to turn on the lights soon. "Because I'm your mother," she says. "I know everything."
Anakin can't argue with her, and offers a weak laugh in response. "Not everything," he reminds her, but his heart isn't in it.
"Most things," Shmi amends. She doesn't know how to help her son herself. Her connection to the Force is through Anakin alone. When he's not near, it's like it was before he was born. And even when he is with her, she knows it's only a fraction of what he experiences. She doesn't know if he'll ever leave Tatooine, if he ever does what the galaxy has in mind for him. She doesn't know what he's been dreaming of lately. But she does know he stands out a little less from the other slaves and citizens on Tatooine, he's a little less strange, a little less radiant –the kind of radiant that drew all eyes, good and bad, and was too bright to stare at directly. She knows strange things have stopped happening around him, and there are less whispers that follow him.
She doesn't know if the shadow that always seems to be lurking behind Anakin is part of getting older or part of what Stryka had been teaching him. She doesn't know if it's there, or if Anakin knows about it. But, when the suns set completely, and she and Anakin are still on the ground, wrapped up in each other, there's no trace of the shadow, and Shmi doesn't think of it as a trick of the light.