Watto's Shop, Tatooine - 1 week after Reanimation Day - Either Late 32 BBY or Early 31 BBY
(Look, I'm not my Mother, I don't know exactly how long it'll be until the Death Star goes boom.)
They aren't The Sun, they have no mystical power over me, but holy buggering fuck is two suns too many.
It wasn't even that long of a trip between where I landed the ship out in the desert and Watto's pawn shop and I'm already one hundred and ten percent done with binary systems. Anakin loves to bitch about the sand, but somehow he forgets to mention how gods damned bright this hellhole is.
Strolling through the door, Watto gets as far as, "No wega- hrk!" before I pull him to me with the force and grab him by the throat. As much fun as my brother makes force choking people look, there's just no substitute for being able to feel it properly when you crush something.
Though sadly I have to hold off on that for now.
Turning to the other occupant of the room I plaster my best smile onto my face and wave cheerfully as I walk towards her. "Good Morning, Lady Skywalker! Just to confirm, how does Watto treat you in general?"
Despite being frozen like a deer in headlights, Shmi's face and body language manages to give away absolutely nothing. Fortunately her eyes, wide with fear, are locked onto mine making her answer largely superfluous as I rummage through her thoughts on the topic.
Which are… kind of damning Watto with faint praise, but apparently he's not the worst master in her expert opinion.
Easing off on Watto's throat but not letting go of him, I lift him up to look him in the eyes. "Rejoice, Watto! For it turns out that Shmi doesn't hate you enough to want to watch you die. Which means I'm here to buy her and all your memories of her for one thousand credits worth of aurodium coins." I have no idea what the going rate is for slaves, but the coins Maul stashed on my ship for me were organized into rolls worth a thousand credits so a thousand credits he gets.
Channeling the darkside as I begin a modified version of the chant Amy came up with a literal lifetime ago now, I'm quickly able to prove my theory that Watto's resistance to Jedi Mind Tricks has more to do with their tendency towards being polite about it than any real resistance. I'm even able to combine looting his mind of memories with looting his body for the controller to Shmi's slave implant.
When I let him go a moment later and hand him the bag of coins, he turns and flits away only to pause when he spots Shmi. "Eh? Who are you? What're you doing there behind my register?"
"Sorry about that, Mister!" I pull his attention back to me before he can think about things too hard and hurt himself. "She wanders off if I don't watch her. You know how slaves get."
"Right. Well… get her out of here."
"Of course, of course." I wave the controller and beckon Shmi forward. "Come along Shmi, we've got a few more stops to make on our way out of the system."
—The Scimitar Sheila The Sixth, Tatooine Outskirts - A Second Entirely Too Long Trip Through The Entirely Too Bright Desert Later—
"And this is the room I found the only bed in, so it's yours now since you actually need sleep. It's kind of awful, but we can replace it when we get rid of all the other annoying crap left over from the rage-fueled idiot-monk I liberated the ship from." I gesture around at the room in question and it's spartan-yet-still-somehow-fucking-emo aesthetic as I turn back to Shmi.
And then I smack that hand to my forehead and drag it down my face in frustration as despite her perfectly blank poker face, Shmi's mind broadcasts, very clearly, just what she's expecting from being told she is being 'assigned to' the room with the bed.
"Nope! Stop that." I wave my arms back and forth in front of me, unsuccessfully attempting to ward off the impending migraine. "Stop that right now! My family tree is already a multi-dimensional traffic circle thanks to eating Heinrich, I do not need to start adding new loop-de-loops to it by trying to become my half brother's new step dad." I take her by the shoulders and lift her slightly off the ground, turning back around and depositing her on the bed. "This is your room, for you to sleep in. Alone. Unless you find someone who is not me that you want to bring home." Letting go of her and taking a step back I point down the hallway. "The fresher is that way but if you manage to find a washing machine to get stuck in you're on your own because I'm not playing that game."
I'm already three strides towards the cockpit, the door automatically closing behind me, before I realize that I've skipped a whole swath of her onboarding process in my little fit of pique. With an exasperated sigh, I turn back around and tromp back into her room. Where I find her still sitting on that monument to pointless discomfort that Maul called a bed.
"Right. So." I pause to collect my thoughts. "I get that I'm kind of terrible at being comforting, and I'm at least aware that just telling someone who's been a slave their entire life that they aren't anymore doesn't really work that way, but: You. Are. Free now. Sort of. We still need to get that implant chip removed." I am, admittedly, just sort of assuming that Alderaan will have some sort of abolitionist movement support structures. It seems like the sort of thing they would do.
Taking a breath to refill my lungs, I watch Shmi wring her hands. "But if you're going to spend the entire trip to Alderaan going spare without an assigned task then… I don't know? Feel free to do some cleaning or whatever. Just stay out of cargo bay 3 since that's where I dumped all of The Idiot's not-safe-for-life-or-sanity crap and…" I sag bonelessly into a slouch as I recall the other thing Sith Artifacts are known for. "Right. I'm just going to go ahead and weld that bay shut just in case one of them tries to mind-whammy you into opening it."