This is the year that Anakin leaves home, and Shmi thinks she can feel it from the second she wakes up on Anakin's ninth birthday. She tries hard to not let it color her interactions with her son, but when Anakin comes home with a Jedi trailing behind him her heart skips and she can barely contain herself from trapping him alone, explaining how important it is that this man take Anakin away from Tatooine, give her son the life she could never give him.
But for now, Shmi has to go about her days with Anakin simmering quietly beside her, trying not to act like if she turns around Anakin will be gone without a trace. She tries to focus, instead, on the day to day – Anakin's smiles, the moments of peace they have together. He's given up trying to practice what Stryka had taught him, and instead, Shmi catches him up late in the corner of the room working on something. If Shmi looks past him, in spite of Anakin's valiant attempts to block it from her sight, she thinks it may be a protocol droid. She thinks he's been working on it for years. Shmi sighs watching Anakin work in the near darkness, tension easing out of his shoulders as he works. When the light is gone completely, Shmi sighs loudly.
Anakin starts and looks over at her, smiles, tries to subtly cover his project, but Shmi catches a glimpse of short metal fingers. "Mom," he says. "Whatcha doin'?"
"Go to bed, Anakin," Shmi says. "There's plenty of time to finish your secret project during the day."
"Oh," Anakin says. His brow crinkles like Shmi brought up something he's never considered before. "Mama," he says, extending his hand towards her. "Would you like to see?"
Shmi nods comes to stand at Anakin's side, and he pulls the cover all the way off of his droid. Shmi runs her hand through Anakin's hair, her heart twinging at the thought of her nine-year-old up late, meticulously putting a droid together.
"He's a protocol droid, and he's for you," Anakin whispers. "I thought you could use an extra set of hands, but he's not finished, so…" Anakin shrugs, like it's no big deal. He covers the droid again. He turns to Shmi again, eyes expectant and wide.
Shmi picks Anakin up. "He's beautiful, Ani," she tells him, planting a kiss to the top his head, carrying him to his bed. "Thank you."
In the months between Anakin's ninth birthday and the day the Jedi come to Tatooine, Anakin crashes another one of Watto's pods. It's mangled, and won't be ready to fly for at least another year, but Anakin is hurt much worse than the pod, not that he notices. In fact, Anakin is proud, standing in the middle of the track with a gash on his head, gloating, gushing assurances that he will be able to repair the pod. He's practically glowing with it. Anakin walks unsteadily towards Watto as the droids swarm around the heap of metal to collect it. Watto doesn't look at him, but he cuts Anakin's food rations in half and tells Shmi if he catches her sneaking Anakin any extra they'll learn what it means to be hungry. Not that Shmi believes a word he says anymore. Anakin, it has become clear, is too great of an asset for Watto to ever really do much more than threaten and Anakin has made it clear that if anything happens to his mother, the consequences would be disastrous.
Anakin is smirking at Watto, and Watto claps him on the back of the head for insolence, but Anakin just keeps smiling. "I'm gonna finish one day," Anakin promises, his gaze faraway. Shmi doesn't know if it's from the concussion or the adrenaline, but she pushes her way through the crowd to grab onto Anakin's hand. It's clammy.
Watto just rolls his eyes. "Not without a pod you're not," he says. "You cost me more money than you make me, boy."
"I'm gonna win," Anakin continues, like he doesn't hear Watto. Maybe he doesn't. He hasn't even acknowledged Shmi, except to squeeze her hand. He stumbles and Shmi scoops up her son, steadying her breath now that Anakin is out of immediate danger.
Anakin spends the next few weeks hungry, even with whatever extra food Shmi can scrounge up for him, but he doesn't complain. He barely seems to notice and he's out much longer than Watto keeps him. She hopes he's not getting into trouble, but he always comes back home with grease stains on his hands and clothes and Kitster not far behind him. He's smiling and laughing, but he still seems far away. He must feel whatever Shmi feels – that his days on Tatooine are numbered.
It's a week before the Jedi come. The protocol droid is almost finished. Anakin is in high spirits. It's a week before the Boonta Eve Classic, and Anakin knows he won't be allowed to race (Shmi is grateful – she doesn't yet know it's the Jedi who are coming, and she hopes the pit of dread and anticipation settling into her stomach isn't about Anakin's death in a podrace), but he's looking forward to it nonetheless. But it's a week before the Jedi come, and even though neither Anakin nor Shmi know that yet they can feel it – the Force shifting around them. Something big is about to happen, about to change.
Anakin is still awake with her, one week before the Jedi come. He is restless, jittery, laying with Shmi in her bed. Nightmares, he said, when he climbed into bed. The worst he's ever had. She knows by the light in the perfectly dark room that Anakin is still awake, but they both pretend to sleep, worried that they'll ruin the quiet, ruin the last few minutes they have together. The night is cold, colder than it's been in months, and Anakin shivers against Shmi, and Shmi pulls him closer, running her hands through his hair.
"Mama," Anakin whispers into the dark. "I don't wanna leave you." He sounds very young then, very lost, like Shmi is only a memory in the dark. Anakin talks in his sleep, so maybe he has drifted off.
"Why would you leave me?" Shmi asks breaking the silence. The room seems to shiver with her voice, or maybe that's just Anakin.
He shrugs. "Just a feeling," he gives as an answer. "And I don't like it." Shmi knows the feeling. She doesn't like it either.
"Ani," she sighs. "One day everything will be different." It's all she can offer in consolation. She knows it's not enough from the feeling of Anakin's shoulders drooping.
"I wish everything would be the same forever," he whispers. "I wish this is exactly how the whole rest of my life is going to happen." With Anakin on the brink of sleep, nothing to hurt him, his mother's arms surrounding him. The closest to peace Anakin has ever known. Even now, though, he is unsettled.
"I wish for you a better life," Shmi whispers into his ear. "One I cannot give you." It's the first time Shmi has ever told Anakin this, her one dream for the future, but she feels that the end of her story with Anakin is drawing closer all the time, and she needs Anakin to know that this life on Tatooine is no life at all. It's not even safe. "There's a whole galaxy out there, Ani, and it's waiting for you. It wants you to explore it. You can't do that if you're always stuck here on Tatooine."
Anakin sighs, settles his head against Shmi's arm. "You could come with me," he whispers. Shmi knows when he says it that it's unattainable. Anakin must too. He doesn't move, but he feels smaller in her arms than he did a moment ago. "I don't think I want to see the galaxy without you."
Shmi swallows past the knot in her throat. "Some things aren't for us to decide," she says weakly. Shmi knows if it were up to her, she would never let her son go. She knows Anakin thinks the same, his fingernails clawing into her arm. He's stronger than any nine-year-old has any right to be. Shmi doesn't think she'll be the same when Anakin finally lets go.
"Not if I can help it," Anakin murmurs darkly. Shmi wishes she knew why it made her feel so afraid.
The Jedi come. His name is Qui-Gon Jinn and he takes Anakin's blood and looks at him like he's somewhere between a miracle and a monster, and Anakin is used to people looking at him like that so he doesn't notice. Besides, Anakin is too busy looking at Padme – a pretty girl of fourteen who smiles at Anakin like he's nothing more than a little boy – and Qui-Gon's lightsaber to even look up at the Jedi's weather-weary face. When Anakin brings them home she knows that this is her last day. If it's not what the Force had in mind, it's what she has. She will not let the Jedi leave without her son. It's not much of a battle to convince him, either. But he says the Jedi will be wary of him, so she doesn't tell him how powerful Anakin really is.
"He must go with you," Shmi says. Qui-Gon looks at her curiously. "He's not meant to be here."
Qui-Gon smiles. "I will take him back to Coruscant," he promises. "I will do my best to teach him. He is a remarkable boy."
But promises made in the cover of night are easier to make than to keep, and Shmi does not fault him for not trying harder to free her as well as her son. It is not her destiny that she feels so strongly in front of her. She is barely a blip in the galaxy. It is Anakin the Jedi have come to find, even if they do not know it, and it is Anakin they must leave with.
It doesn't make saying goodbye any easier. Shmi has never been away from Anakin for more than a few hours, she's never been in another hemisphere from her son. It seems to her, as he walks away, pressing as close as he can to Padme, that Anakin has always been a part of her. She swallows her panic at the thought, that she cannot protect him any longer, and he turns his blue eyes back on her, again. He mouths something in Huttese so the Jedi and the girl cannot hear it or understand it.
I love you, Mama, he mouths, but Shmi can feel it reverberate in the air between them, she can hear it like he whispered it into her ear. She watches until Anakin disappears beyond the horizon, and then, an hour later, she knows he is gone, taking the Force with him, and at last, she cries.
A/N: It's finished! It took me over a year to complete, and in the middle there, I was really unsatisfied with what I was turning out, but I am relatively happy with these last three chapters. I hope this was somewhat satisfying for you to read, and I just want to thank anyone who has been waiting for this piece to come to a conclusion. Also, catch me crying about my own writing editing this 20 minutes ago.