A/N: The language of the Naboo will be referred to as the more canon-correct "Nabooian" from here on out. This has been adjusted in previous chapters.

The coming description for what happened during Shmi's rescue attempt came straight out of R.A. Salvatore's AOTC novelization.

Chapter 28. 35 Hours, Part Two

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

— Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Hour 8

Hope and despair waged their epic conflict, using my sanity as the battlefield. The worst kind of thoughts— not that Anakin wouldn't return without Shmi, but that he would not return at all— pulverized the defensive walls of my optimism like canon fire.

I had already realized that if Anakin were to be killed, nothing and no one was likely to provide us notice save for the messenger of Time. Drawn out, anguishing, time— coupled with a continuously empty horizon.

{Ani's got a lot of ground to cover. It could take days for him to find her.}

Eight hours had passed since he left, each more unnerving that the last. I wasn't sure my fortress of sanity could endure days. It wasn't like I didn't have transport of my own, nor that I was in need of anyone's approval to use it. As I've said, I've never been good at twiddling my thumbs and waiting around for news to come to me. Cliegg, poor man, wouldn't be capable of stopping me in his state. I suspected Beru, though she wouldn't like it, would reluctantly let me go. Owen was the bigger, more capable barrier, but I'd dare him to try and keep me from my search. I'd give it one more night before I took the Nubian cruiser and started doing low-level flyovers across the desert until… until…

Unable to suppress it, my imagination played out the dark scenario of Obi-Wan Kenobi summoning Anakin and I to a conference call onboard the ship, only for I alone to appear. How would I explain to the master what had happened to his apprentice? What if I had to tell him Anakin had been gone for days, weeks; that the hope he was still alive was near nonexistent?

What if his speeder breaks down in the middle of the desert and he's days away from resources? What happens if he runs out of food and— far more deadly in this climate— water? What if he makes it out of the Tusken camp alive but severely injured, and he cannot make it back to us before he succumbs to his wounds? What if he…

I buried my face in the thin, striped sheath of the pillow. My fists gripped the innocent material caught in the crossfire as I fought back against these waking nightmares with everything I had.

Sleep was eluding me, and the quiet stillness of the bedroom was only serving as a fruitful playground for my morbid fears. I suddenly couldn't stay within its four gray walls in any more than I could conceive leaving Tatooine. My body, perhaps elated to be moving, rose from my supine on the bed in eager movement. I retrieved my printed cloak from a hook on the wall by the door. Feeling the chill of the night air, I pulled the garment around my shoulders as I began to walk the dim hallway. Needing neither shade nor security, I kept the hood down.

Warm, orange lights tucked in the ceiling every few meters led the way to a destination I hadn't set. I wasn't sure how near or far the other bedrooms were, so I remained as soundless as I could while I aimlessly wondered the Lars home like a ghost.

How many days will pass until you must resign yourself to flying that cruiser out of Tatooine's atmosphere by yourself?

I shushed that voice with an inner vitriol I didn't know I possessed. It was far, far too soon to start speculating on how long hope could realistically live without Anakin's return. Besides, if it came to that, I knew my hope would continue long past the hour of logical reason.

As if slowly wading through Time itself, my limbs doing their part to push it onward, I walked around the compound in a daze. Whitewashed walls and small crates full of abstract vaporator parts lined my path. Eventually, my feet dragged themselves to the atrium of their own accord— my fourth pass through it in twenty minutes. After all, from there one could best hear any sounds coming beyond the rim of the dwelling.

On this lap, for whatever reason, I paused my stride on the makeshift track. I cupped my elbows as I crossed my arms over my chest and looked up, up towards the shimmering sight above. Even with the view limited by the circular ridge, what I could see of the stars was incredible. When I focused on the edge, where soil met sky, and stayed absolutely still, I thought I just make out the gradual creep of the planet's rotation. I didn't realize I was holding my breath until my lungs clenched in their reach for air. I'd become a human statue; eyes transfixed by the minuscule movement of the stars.

Even though I traveled back and forth across the galaxy on a regular basis, I rarely had the chance on land to stop and look up in appreciation at a cloudless night sky. The nocturnal vibrancy of Coruscant made it an impossibility, and even the light pollution above Theed hampered such a simple endeavor. I tried to think of the last time I'd stopped to take in the luxury when I had the opportunity to do so.

And then I remembered. Easily.

{I used to tell my mother— and Qui-Gon once, actually— that I was going to visit them all. Ambitious words for a junk rat on Tatooine.}

{Hmm. Not so impractical for a Jedi.}

{Just add on a couple hundred thousand years to my life and I might be able to see half.}

I rubbed my forearms in an act of self-comfort which did not satisfy.

You have to come back, Ani. You're just nineteen. You still have so many worlds to see.

"Clear night."

My head spun to my left, eyes immediately seeking out the source of the gruff voice. Though I recognized it, I was startled all the same by realizing I wasn't alone.

A low, black figure on the other side of the atrium began to move towards me. From the activation of his hover chair, I immediately knew it was Cliegg. My eyes drifted upwards towards the starlit canopy. "Yes, it is."

"He'll have just enough light to track them."

"And they won't see him coming on the horizon when he finds them," I concurred.

Cliegg didn't respond to this, which I silently noted. He rested his chair a few feet away from me as we kept our chins up, both taking in the bedazzled sky. We stayed in a wordless company for several moments. Two statues. Two specks in the galaxy coming to its grand altar with their hopeful prayer.

"You can't go out after him, you know." My chin stayed up, but my eyes dropped down to meet Cliegg's. I kept my arms crossed over my chest and peered at him over my cheeks. I shouldn't have been surprised that he'd guessed thoughts I'd already run through. If anyone could relate to how I was feeling at staying here while the person my heart yearned for faced danger and threat somewhere else— it was Cliegg. "If he comes back—

"When he comes back." My face leveled as I squared my chin at him. I would not give credentials to my morbid fears by hearing them spoken aloud.

Cliegg looked at me with a jaw set as resolutely as mine. "When he comes back, the last thing I imagine he'll want to hear is that he's now got to go back out there and start looking for you."

I hadn't thought of that. Part of my current frustration of not knowing anything about Anakin was that he'd left without a location transmitter on him. But such a reversed issue did have a solution— if the Lars owned a comm link with a decent range, I could take my ship out across the desert and be alerted to Anakin's arrival within seconds. He thought he was a fast pilot— I would no doubt set a new land speed record in returning to the homestead.

"You don't look as defeated by my words as I would like." Through the darkness, I could see Cliegg regarding me with a distinct air of concern. I was touched by it. In large part, I was still very much a stranger to him. Even Owen and Beru, with their abbreviated summary, knew far more about me and my brief but viable connection to the Skywalkers than this kind man did.

But I wasn't controlled easily, if at all, by my father, my mother, Captain Panaka, Captain Typho, Nute Gunray, or pro-war factions. Apparently, even the Chancellor of the Republic had to pull rank to get me in line. With all respect, that stubbornness would not bend to Cliegg Lars— not when Anakin's well-being was at stake.

"I won't fly out on my own for at least another day," I replied, sincere. "I can't promise you anything beyond that."

"Is he so much your responsibility?"

That was a blended, complicated question with a remarkably simple answer. Quietly, as one would if revealing a beautiful sin, I replied, "We are each others."

Cliegg stared back at me knowingly. A slight breeze dipped down to find us, and it lifted the thinning hair on the top of his head. Finally, he nodded. Something about me our or conversation inspired him to dig into a pocket on his vest as he asked, "Do you want to see something pretty special?"

I took a few steps closer in muted confirmation. He'd retrieved a compact, black disk and was holding it in his palm like it was a priceless treasure. "I keep this on me at all times. I've, um, I've looked at it at least once a week for the last five years. But I…" Cliegg hesitated and shook his head. His chin dropped briefly into his chest before rising again. "I haven't looked at it in a month now."

I nodded at him somberly, clueless as to what was about to happen but at least aware that it would be significant. Cliegg pushed an imperceptible button somewhere on the disk. Suddenly, a hologram figure about seven inches tall appeared. It was immediately in motion, as the woman represented in it beamed with life.

For the first time in ten years, I looked upon the face of Shmi Skywalker Lars. Yet I had never seen her like this. Her immense smile stretched across her face, and her brown eyes danced with obvious joy. Her hair was set in two tidy buns on either side of her head. She swayed from side to side, her long beige dress moving with her. She looked to be on the verge of laughter. The video capture only lasted a too-quick three seconds before the loop restarted, but it was enough to see the radiating love as she gazed at whoever was recording.

"This was taken on our wedding day."

Cliegg was staring at the image like it was both sustaining and breaking him. I placed a hand on his shoulder and felt him take a shuddering breath.

"She looks beautiful."

He nodded, his eyes still glued to Shmi's face. "It was… a very good day." After several seconds, with a deep sigh, he pushed on a button once more and the image disappeared. He tucked it back into his vest, just beside his heart. His palm stayed there for a long moment before his hand dropped into his lap unceremoniously. "I thought that would help with my guilt." By his bitterly disappointed tone, I gathered that his goal had gone unaccomplished.

I frowned and crouched down beside his chair. "Guilt? You have nothing to be ashamed of." I placed the hand that had been on his shoulder on the arm of his chair. "You couldn't have known what would happen."

"That's not exactly…" He rubbed his grizzled cheek in much the same way I'd seen his son perform the motion. "Thirty of us went out there to bring her back."

"And four returned." I remembered the tally all too viscerally.

Cliegg's torturous gaze drilled into my eyes, giving me the impression of a man who wanted to throw himself onto a fire. There was something he was desperately trying to say without the use of words. "Four. Me. Owen. Two others." He lifted two fingers to drive the point home. "To bring back my wife." With his emphasis, he clenched his fist and jut his thumb into his chest.

I swallowed as his meaning registered. As isolated as the farmers seemed to be, for the Lars to muster so many of them must've been quite a rally of the populace. While Shmi's abduction was the catalyst, the Tuskens had stolen from many families even as both Lars men defied the odds and made it back. It would take generations for other homesteads to recover. Twenty-six out of the twenty-eight men they'd gone to for help never made it home, yet Cliegg and Owen continued to breathe.

"I should have died out there with them."

I squeezed his wrist, but I should've soothed him, I should have told him how wrong he was. Yet I couldn't stop the words from coming. It was the question I couldn't bring myself to ask Owen and Beru, and I lambasted myself for not keeping silent now. "What happened when you found the Tuskens? Why did so many perish?"

Selfishly, awfully, a tiny part of me wanted to hear the farmers had decimated the Tusken Raiders in turn, thereby increasing Anakin's odds now.

He looked at me gravely. "It's not a story for pretty, young ladies."

The eyes of a wartime queen stared back at him. "I assure you, I can handle it."

He sighed wearily again, and I told myself to accept whatever brief answer he might want to give. I felt terrible enough asking him to relive anything, but this was what Anakin was facing. I had to know.

"They anticipated us coming. …Or maybe it's their standard setup for their camps. I don't know. It worked."

I stayed still. Silent.

Cliegg set his jaw then let the words spill out. "They'd put up a wire across the field. They knew what they were doing. It was neck height to a man on a speeder bike." He gazed at me and let me figure out the rest.

I pulled back from him suddenly, cringing in horror. "They were decapitated before they even had a chance to fight?"

Cliegg nodded grimly. "We came at them in a charge. I was near the center trying to catch up to the leaders… my friends and neighbors, all of them." He looked down at his thigh and grimaced. "I didn't have time to stop my speeder. I-I acted on instinct— stood on the seat and tried to jump clear. I almost made it." His eyes flickered briefly in the direction of one of the doors, perhaps one leading to his son's bedroom. "If Owen hadn't been riding in the rear of the group, we'd both be dead. He dragged me onto his speeder and brought me home."

I looked into his face, but I wasn't listening well anymore. My alarm had gone from extreme to an emotion which seized my very soul. Anakin was on a bike. Anakin, the young man with an insatiable desire for speed under the most relaxed of circumstances. Three moons and crop of stars be damned— he was hunting across the desert under fifteen hours of night. As gruesome as it must've been for Cliegg to watch the warning unfold in front of him, Anakin would not have the benefit of knowing about a wire until it was too late. No skill with a lightsaber, no quick reflexes in a fight, no dash and stealth would have the chance to save him if he alone did not see a death wire which thirty other men were not able to perceive.

My gut lurched violently, and I stumbled to a sudden stand. As my stomach acid swirled, I took several steps away from Cliegg and put my hands on my waist. I tried to breathe but my lungs were as erratic as my pulse.

Ani, Ani, Ani!

"Oh, no, see, that's why I didn't want to— Padmé? That's your name, right, dear? Padmé?" I nodded once, briskly. My hand was going up to cover my mouth as I fought back a wail. "He'd be a fool to get too close to them on the speeder bike. He will know it will tip them off long before he gets to the camp. We only charged them hellbent like that because we were in a group. Dear, are you alright?"

I tried my best to let his words of reassurance sink in even as I knew he couldn't be sure. He might've heard a thousand stories about him, but Cliegg didn't know the man he spoke of. My beautiful, strong, gallant Anakin. Who loves speed almost as much as he loves his mother. Who just might be reckless enough to barrel into a Tusken camp if he sets his mind to it.

Cliegg maneuvered his hover chair beside me. "He won't come at them like we did."

I put a hand over my wayward stomach. As I took deeper breaths, I felt more confident that its contents were safe where they were. But I still looked at Cliegg pleadingly. "I don't want to hear any more about the attack on the camp."

He nodded, seemingly quite ready to acquiesce to this. "Tell you what." His lips tugged up in what I appreciated as an attempt at a smile, but it floundered before it reached his eyes. "I won't tell you any more about that, and you don't tell me what Ani's seen in his dreams about his mother— even if I ask you to." If possible, the sorrow lines in his face deepened even further. "Deal?"

I felt my chin move up and down. "Deal."

Hour 9

Cliegg had gone back inside some ten minutes ago. Alone, I was positioned at the white dining room table in Anakin's seat, bent forward at the waist. My right ear rested on my extended right arm. From this tilted angle, my eyes roamed the inside of the crater without seeing much. Near my chest and enduring heart, my left hand's fingertips drew purposeless shapes on the table in the dust of sand.

I'd politely refused Cliegg's encouragement that I return to my bed. I knew sleep and I would be continued strangers, and the atrium still offered me what the indoors could not— the easier marking of the sound of an approaching speeder's engine.

My eyes wandered as I looked at things in my vicinity through the dimness. They landed first on a plant not far away. Its sheer existence was a rebellious miracle on this arid sphere.

"Plant," I mumbled, absentmindedly using my index finger to draw another shape which had nothing to do with my observation.

"Lithya." I softly recited the word for 'plant' in Nabooian.

"Rutch." The same word in Huttese.

My eyes dragged themselves to the next distraction.

"Wall." Another quiet pause. "Cedéna… Mun."

My heart pumped in the pace of a ticking clock. I began to tap the table lightly with every vocabulary word I droned out.

"Table… Limaré… Burkhat…"

"Sky… Zulu… Tutchado."

I halted, my breath hitching slightly.

'Zulu' was Nabooian for 'Sky'.

My crafty handmaiden had titled us the Zulubs for our covert trip on the Jendirian Valley, where she'd posed us as a married couple. It was too similar to Anakin's last name to be a coincidence.

I let out a tiny sigh and shook my head infinitesimally against my elbow. "Very original, Dormé. Verrry original." My voice was morose to my own ears.

"Walker… Tanamé… Orchetu."

{You're exactly the way I remember you in my dreams.}

"Blond… Elenamu… Gich."

"Hair… Nuyian… Fiqta."

"Blue… Unda… Rasso."

"Eyes… Iltheian… Fiqtuwah."

{Mmm, no. No, I'd be much too frightened to tease a Senator.}

"Smile… Miliean… Ghusput…"

Every connection between his native language and mine was a prayer link. I did not stop my benediction for a long while. I know— my heart kept track of every single second.

Hours 10 & 11

My eyes fluttered open. The motion itself caused ache.

"Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to wake you!"

My lids couldn't have been closed for more than a few minutes— there was no grogginess to shake off at Beru's unexpected arrival, nor did I blink too much in adjustment to the light she'd turned on. I sat up and shook my head at her apologetic face. Her blonde hair waved around her shoulders in loose tresses. She had a dark blue shawl wrapped around her shoulders. "No, no, you didn't. I was just resting my eyes." I stretched my stiff back whilst staying in my chair. I hadn't straightened it in over an hour.

Beru walked behind the chair opposite me on the other side of the table. "Padmé, when was the last time you actually slept?"

I tried to do the math in my overwrought brain. I'd last woken up on Naboo, long before the starry voyage, the excursion to Watto's, the flight here, and everything that had transpired since our arrival at the homestead. To add to this, I hadn't slept well back at Varykino— I'd spent most of the night tossing and turning, crying, listening to the rainstorm, checking on Anakin, or wanting to check on Anakin.

My body swayed with exhaustion, though I was waking up more and more now that I was no longer without company. "I'll sleep when Ani comes back."

Beru shook her head and sat down in the chair directly across from me. She placed her hands flat on the table between us and leaned forward. "Padmé, no. That could be days."

I thought of the week after the invasion, when my handmaidens almost went on strike because I refused to rest. If I could go three days without sleep as a busy Queen hustling from meeting to meeting, who knew how long my body could last just walking the compound like a phantom?

Then I remembered that individual days on Tatooine were ten hours longer than they were on Naboo.

I looked up at at the young woman studying me. I wanted to find that fire which coursed through me as a monarch. I wanted to gaze back at her with stubborn strength and declare that I'd stayed awake for days before. But instead of an inferno, a breathy whisper leaked out of my lips. "It's not a choice for me, Beru."

She sighed so softly I almost didn't catch it. An air of understanding seemed to pass between us, and she didn't press any further. After a moment, she pushed her chair back and came to a stand. "If you won't sleep, can I at least get you to eat? You hardly had anything at dinner." She gave me a motherly look that Dormé would've been proud of.

"I wouldn't want you to go to the trouble."

"It's no trouble. That's why I'm here— I came to get something to eat myself."

I nodded, agreeing more out want to appease her than out of hunger.

Beru left me to the table once again as she disappeared down the curved stairs into the kitchen. I listened to her prepare some food for us. Perhaps I should have gotten up to help her, but my body seemed sunken into my chair. When she came back, neither of us said anything as she passed me a plate and a quarter of the loaf of bread. It was very porous but surprisingly sweet. My stomach, for the moment, accepted it without dissent. We ate in silence for several seconds. I tried to think of the word for 'bread' in Huttese.

"I lied."

I looked up to see a timid Beru peering back at me. "About?"

"I couldn't sleep, either. Food was just an excuse to get up and move."

I picked at my bread, tearing it into smaller pieces. "There seems to be a lot of that going on tonight."

Beru let out a chuckle. At the unexpected sound, I regarded her curiously. "Not with Owen. When that man falls asleep, a ship the size of the one you came on could land next to his ears and he'd keep snoring. Nothing wakes him up when he's out." She complained about this with all the light air of a girl obviously in love. "Thankfully, he doesn't snore very loudly."

My own lips tugged up gamely, much to my surprise. "Anakin does something similar when he sleeps. It's a very soft, very quiet snore. Almost like a purr."

Beru rose a sly eyebrow at my words, as if to suggest, 'Still sticking with the 'just friends' line?'

Instead of saying this, she seemed to settle more comfortably into her chair. "Tell me about him."

"Ani? I thought you heard most of Shmi's stories."

"Oh, I did," she answered with a smile. "But those are all from when he was a little boy. You're the only one of us who knows what the grown up Anakin is like."

Something about her phrasing struck a chord in me I hadn't known to safeguard. My heart strained against my ribs painfully. Perhaps, it was because he'd plainly worked to get me to see him in such a grownup way, but it was the moments when he wasn't trying that had accomplished his goal the most. I didn't worry about his safety so much in that moment as I just simply, wholly, missed him— his intense stares, his straightforward one-liners, the dimple in his chin, the ageless and mischievous youth in his eyes. The steadiness of his arm when he led me away from Cordé's funeral. That laugh as we rolled in the meadow. A longing for his sheer presence that threatened to undo me on the spot raked through me.

And so, in the midst of this tumultuous yearning, I held on to the image of Anakin in my mind all the more tightly for the warmth and strength it gave me.

"He's kind," I whispered. "And he's so full of wonder despite all he's already seen with the Jedi." My left cheek twitched upwards. "He's sarcastic and arrogant, but in that way that makes you too charmed to care." Beru smiled at this. I thought of Anakin's account of jumping through Coruscant's traffic lanes, and the spontaneity that birthed our trip to the engine room on the freighter. "Impulsive but not half-hearted. Direct. He's thoughtful and attentive beyond any man I've ever met. And when you're with him, you feel…" My eyes closed briefly. "Safe. Important… Like anything is possible."

{Anything is possible, Padmé, listen to me.}

I came back to the reality of the room and Anakin's absence unwillingly. Still holding to the feeling talking about him gave me, I looked at Beru with ardent hope. "I can tell you more stories. Stories that even surpass what he did on Tatooine."

With Beru's blessing, I let loose almost all of it. With the exception of revealing my station as Queen and, later, Galactic Senator, I told her everything that happened after we left Mos Espa ten years ago. All the patience I'd previously held to wait for Anakin and Shmi's company evaporated. The more I talked about him, the closer and more alive he felt. Drunk on this feeling, I became like a dam breaking. When I ran out of details to tell her about the Invasion of Naboo and Ani's part in the salvation of it, I moved on to the stories he'd told me about his years as a Jedi Padawan. I shocked myself by how much I'd evidently hung on Anakin's every word about his training and adventures. I tried to do justice to all the storytelling magic he'd possessed when he recounted them to me, but I nevertheless assured her that he would do a better job of it himself when he came back to the homestead.

But I didn't stop there. Mindful to trim certain identifying details, yet unable to sequester the eagerness to talk about this man, I told her about our reunion. How he'd saved me from the Kouhuns in my bedroom. His speeder chase with Obi-Wan. Our posing as a married couple on the refugee ship— the engine room, the dejarik game and how quickly he learned how to play. How graciously and earnestly he'd sought to fix the broken toy of a child traveling in a bunk near ours.

Our faces stretched into wide grins as I told Beru about teaching him how to swim, and the clumsiness of his efforts. She revealed that Anakin's childhood fear about the mysterious open bodies of water was one many younglings on Tatooine shared. She wasn't surprised to hear he didn't like fish, but we heartily chuckled over Owen and Anakin having in common a ravenous appetite for food.

I told her about Cordé's funeral. I did not shy away from indicating the extent of my breakdown. How could I, when it only emphasized how much Anakin was there for me? I spoke of his wisdom on the journey home. His surprising me with the lantern and helping me to find my closure.

We laughed and rolled our eyes as I told her about the shaak fall, though, cascading waterfalls were beyond Beru's imagining. She cheered me when I told her how I'd paid him back for his prank in the lake.

In the back of my mind, all these disclosures were merely an advance to what she and the others would undoubtedly hear once Anakin and Shmi returned. There would be endless questions— especially from his mother— and no reason to hide the truth of any of it from his family. Minus certain heated events in the rain or in the hut on one glassmaker's island, Ani and I could share every detail, including my full identity and threat of danger. I already trusted the Lars' even more than I had earlier in the kitchen, but with Anakin safely there by my side, there wouldn't be a need to conceal anything.

It was sound logic.

But the truth was— once I got going, I just couldn't stop gushing about Anakin.

Hour 12

The gaiety I found in telling Beru about Anakin and our time together rebounded my sense of optimism and tenacity better than ten hours of sleep ever could. By the end of those near two hours, I was slumped almost happily in my chair. My cheeks hurt deliciously from smiling so wide for so long.

Beru rolled the bottom of her cup against the surface of the table, a pleased smile embellishing her face. At one point during my verbal dissertation on Anakin Skywalker, she'd paused me to fetch us mugs of blue milk before I ran my throat dry. "It's amazing," she mused, pausing long enough to warrant a raised brow from me.

"What is?"

"I know it's not the case in every family, but I've always believed, for the most part, that traits are passed from parent to child— beyond the physical. Hearing the stories about Ani and his adventures as a boy were already surprising, but doubly so after hearing about his exploits jumping around the galaxy." She tilted her head sideways slightly as she looked at me pensively. "Shmi has always been strong, but in her own quiet, reserved way. Anakin sounds like the exact opposite."

"He can be," I vouched. "At moments, he puts the recklessness down and challenges what you expect of him."

She smiled. "No, I see that. It came across in what you've shared about him, and that's what amazes me."

I tilted my head to mimic her angle. "How so?"

"He's still so very much like the woman I know. He's still so much Shmi." She smiled even bigger. "After all these years apart, after all the different escapades— from what I'm hearing— he's still Shmi Skywalker's son."

I considered her statement thoughtfully. For Anakin's sake, I felt great pride for the pair at Beru's words. For the Jedi's sake… Well, I didn't care to ponder much what the Jedi would make of how they'd failed to stomp out the motherly influence in their prodigy, no matter how positive it was.

"Compassion, kindness, morality. Ani isn't proving my theory wrong that these things are inherently passed from parent to child, no matter how long they are separated."

"Compassion," I repeated. The memory of melodic voice from a refugee freighter floated through my ears. "That's an apt word to describe what's in his heart."

"Like mother, like son."

A soft breeze came through the alcove, swirling the sand on the table into little circles.

I smiled back at her. "Like mother, like son."

Hour 13

Alone, I made my way into the Lars garage. Several amber lights rimmed the circular bearing in the ceiling, It was a dark, industrial place which became a bright, industrial space when I switched on a work light. I looked around and saw few items that I recognized for what they were. A garage wasn't my element, so to speak.

But I liked it because I thought Anakin would like it. I had a confident sense that this rustic garage full of tools and machines would be his favorite room in the home.

With that comforting thought in mind, I sat on the edge of a curved stoop, wrapped my arms around my legs, hugged my knees to my chest, and pictured Anakin running around the place— building and improving anything and everything he could get his hands on.

After a moment, I set my chin on the bridge made from my knees as I continued to imagine him tinkering in here, blissfully happy in his work. A causeway at my back was exposed to the open air up above. In the quiet dark of the garage, minutes passed like sand falling from my hand. I heard nothing but the low hum of the large, blinking machine to my right. In the absence of any sound of a speeder bike, it was harder to hold on to the gaiety I'd felt in the dining room.

Hours 14 & 15

C-3PO found me in the garage. Taking pity on his complaints of sand and other violations amongst his mechanical innards, I gave him an oil bath. I admit, it was the first one I'd ever administered, so he had to talk me through it a little. I think I enjoyed wrapping and hoisting Threepio in the chains and dunking him into the well even more than did— which is saying something. It felt good to put aside my own cares and think of someone else's; to be able to alleviate someone else's pain. For as long as it lasted, it was a fun and worthy distraction.

As long as it lasted.

Hour 16

Before she'd gone back to bed, Beru promised to find me in time for the sunrise. She guaranteed that a binary dawn over the desert was worth the trek upstairs just for the sight. She hadn't needed to sell me on the idea at all before I told her I'd be there for it, but I wasn't excited for pretty daybreaks. I was thoroughly exhausted, emotionally and psychologically, with the fifteen hours of night, and I was ready to welcome the sixteen hours of suns for Anakin's sake alone.

Wanting to make it easier for Beru to find me in the compound, I navigated my way back to the atrium. My weary body was getting stiff again, and I worried that if I sat at the dining room table, I might not have the energy to get back up. Instead, I ambled in a slow circle around the crater; the large, white stalk of metal in the center served as the middle point of my clock.

Beru and Owen, the latter looking a bit more refreshed than the former, emerged from one of the doorways just as the sky was starting to take on a purple hue. They were both dressed in what I presumed to be their daily garb, and neither looked like being up before dawn was necessarily unusual for them. It seemed work routinely began early on the Lars moisture farm.

"Ready?" Owen asked me, gesturing towards the stairs. "Beru filled me in on your sunrise excursion. I'll stand with you both until the suns are up." He looked at his girlfriend as he said, more cautiously, "And we'll stay by the dome. You don't need to go more than a few steps to see the suns come out. It's not like they'll be hiding behind anything."

{It was just before dawn. They came out of nowhere— a hunting party of Tuskens Raiders. Your mother had gone out early like she always did to collect mushrooms that grow off the vaporators.}

"I understand," I nodded, grasping his concern. Beru nodded too. Privately, I doubted if this sunrise vista would be worth the stress line it was sprouting in Owen's forehead.

It was.

Beru led the way as Owen and I followed her up the stairs. It took a few minutes for the first sun to show itself, but its coming was announced by the way gold streaks began to form across the sky like arms being stretched after one wakes from a slumber. These limbs shot forth across an expanse that was shifting from weak purple to warm blue with tinges of pink. Just as one sun finished its levitation over the horizon, its late sibling began to peek its head at the line. Dawn was coming quickly now. With the blessing of the burning globes, a new day was officially underway on Tatooine. It had begun with a breathtaking painting that even stunned Owen into awe, and I imagined he'd witnessed many a sunrise from this very spot.

It had been a long time since I'd seen so much uninterrupted sky from ground level. Skyscrapers crowded the horizon on Coruscant much the same way the jagged mountains or even hills of Naboo did. It wasn't that I hadn't been on delegation or humanitarian trips to desert planets before, but the flat landscape of Tatooine was still an uncommon site to me.

I didn't realize how resentful I was feeling of the planet as I passed its night until I felt a new appreciation for it blossoming in my chest. Though it lacked placid lakes or— as Threepio called it— a cosmopolitan flair, there was a respect Tatooine demanded from its inhabitants which Coruscant, Naboo, Alderaan, etc. did not. It had no time or mercy for the weak-spirited or unimaginative. The terrain commanded that those who wanted or had to call it home maintain an ever conscious will to survive. Whether by the threat of the Hutts and their crime syndicate, the heat, the dryness, the Tuskens, or any other manner of threat this land seemed to produce, anyone who lived here would grow up with a special breed of strength and grit. And even I— a child of a world of water and greenery— could see the frightening beauty not just in the binary showcase, but in the tenacity this land molded its people with. This place was, in its own way, as elite as it was beautiful.

Just like Anakin.

For what felt like the first time since he'd left, I knew with absolute certainty that Anakin would come back. He was a child of this realm, and that could not be stomped out of him anymore than Shmi's influence could be eradicated by the Jedi.

When I walked back down the steps with her, I thanked Beru sincerely, though I kept silent about the true gift she'd unknowingly given me.

Hope.