Chapter Text
When they grabbed her, Shmi thought she was being taken as a slave again.
They hit her over the head but didn’t knock her out; there was no stun blast to stop her struggling. She did struggle, that much she could say for herself. It didn’t do much. They bound her hands, wrapped her up in coarse netting, and dragged her away before she could cry out for help.
Perhaps it was the fear, why it took her so long to realize they were Tuskens. It didn’t make sense. Sand People were the bogeymen of the settlers. They would come at sunrise or sunset, to break and steal and kill… but they wouldn’t take people alive.
Why was she alive?
Had Tuskens become slavers now?
Her captors didn’t tell her anything, just tied her to a bantha’s back like a pack of fodder. Her face was pressed into the rough fabric of the saddle. It stank - the thick, cloying smell of a living creature. She choked on it, and on the fear in her lungs. When she turned her head, she could see the massive curling horns of the bantha. Past them, maybe, another animal.
The ropes on her wrists were thick and reddish, like the bantha fur. Probably woven from it. Too thick to tear or to chew through. She tried anyway, but she only made herself gag on the taste. She had taken a knife this morning to clean the mushrooms, and had small shears in the pouch on her belt. The Tusken took both.
The suns rose above the horizon, and then rose further. She could feel the heat on the uncovered back of her neck, her legs. She did put on some protective cream this morning, but she would burn anyway.
The bantha kept a steady pace, faster than she would have expected. They always seemed so slow when she saw them wander by in town. There weren’t any wild ones on the salt flats. They used to lick the moisture off the vaporators, she remembered Owen explaining once, often damaging them in the process. The settlers shot them whenever they spotted one - for meat or out of spite. After a while, there were none. Either they were all killed or they left. Maybe the Tuskens herded them away.
Her thoughts looped on themselves. She thought of Owen sitting at the dining table, excitedly reading to her from an article about the Great Chott salt flats that Cliegg assigned him for homework. Such a good boy. He loved this place his father had decided to call home, even if it took the life of his mother. He didn’t resent Shmi, even back then, so soon after Cliegg brought her with them from a supply run to Mos Espa. An unplanned addition to their shopping list: foodstuffs, vaporator parts, wife.
She blinked hard, wiped the sweat on the saddle awkwardly. She was drifting, a small part of her knew. The two suns were almost overhead, bearing down on them like a hammer straightening out a dented durasteel plate. Humans didn’t stay out at this time of the day unless they really couldn’t help it. The Tatoo star twins could kill you.
They might kill me, Shmi thought.
The bantha swayed on.
She watched the long bantha fur drag along the ground. It whipped up small puffs of sand. It would leave a track, she thought; maybe Cliegg and Owen would be able to follow it.
Would they?
Shmi hoped so. She felt guilty for her doubt, but when in her life did fate show better than benign indifference to her? But she would hope. Cliegg would want to go after her.
Her arms and shoulders cramped from staying so long in one position. She got used to that as she aged, to the way her back would protest bending over a lump of bread dough or a broken condenser valve. At the farm at least she could move and stretch her sore body. Here, she could only shift a bit and grit her teeth.
Her uncovered skin turned into its own source of agony. Her lower legs fared the worst. The hem of her skirt tangled up with the netting and let the sun get to the softer skin it usually protected. Not soft; no part of Shmi was soft. But softer.
Her mind wouldn’t let go of these petty physical hurts. She’d had worse; she’d had much worse. Then again, maybe it was better to think about aching joints than about what lay ahead. She willed the universe to listen to her: please, don’t make me a slave again. The life of a settler’s wife was not easy, but every morning she could open her eyes and think, I’m not a slave.
She pressed her eyes closed. Please, she thought. Please.
She didn’t remember falling asleep, but between one blink and the next, the suns were gone. One of the Tuskens was shaking her and it sent a wave of agony through her entire body. Her throat was parched, her head pounded with a headache.
The Tusken finally let her be, propped against the side of a laying bantha. It - they? - pushed a cracked gourd of some sort in her face. She breathed in and inhaled the fine black dust that wafted from it. Once she was done coughing, the Tusken pushed the gourd at her again, pressing it against her lips and tipping it. The intention was clear. She opened her mouth and let the liquid in.
It was vile. She couldn’t help it and gagged, the liquid dripping down her chin and onto her overshirt. The Tusken screeched at her, grabbed her shoulder and shook her roughly. But– they did not hit her. After a moment they calmed down and pushed her to drink again. This time, she fought her gag reflex and won.
When she finished all the liquid in the gourd, the Tusken got up and turned to the bantha she was propped up on. They ignored her and tended to the animal with greater patience than they did to her.
Shmi looked around. Beside “her” Tusken, she could see another two, all busy with incomprehensible tasks related to the banthas. There were five, arranged in a tight circle around them. The Tuskens worked with fast, jerky movements. Were they nervous?
They did not stay long. Before the sky was completely dark, the Tusken tied her back up onto the bantha and the group moved on.
The night cooled fast. At first it was a relief after the scorching heat of the day. After a while, though, not being able to move, the cold seeped into Shmi’s muscles. She shivered. And again, and then she couldn’t stop.
The Tuskens used no lights. The darkness plastered itself against her skin. She raised her head and looked for the horizon. Perhaps she could see the lights of a nearby farm? She saw nothing. She didn’t even know if there were any farms in that direction.
Every step the bantha took made her head hurt. She didn’t know what was the cause - the sun, the thirst, her head hanging low all day. It didn’t matter, it wouldn’t help knowing. She knew the best thing she could do was to focus on something else, anything else. The pain wouldn’t go away, but it would quiet, the way your ears would quiet down a persistent hum of machinery and you wouldn’t realize, until something brought you back. Then the sound would pop back, like a bubble.
A headache was not persistent. the pain ebbed and flowed, in a way Shmi imagined an ocean would. Water. Once she started thinking about it, she couldn’t stop. Since early morning her only drink was whatever that dark dusty plant was.
As the night drew on, her body added another discomfort. She needed to relieve herself. Why, when she drank almost nothing all day? Another thing not to focus on. She doubted the Tuskens would stop for her. She didn’t know if they understood Basic or Huttese, the only two languages she could speak.
She tried to think of something, anything else. Had she ever heard of Sand People taking hostages? No, not even in stories to scare the children. Strangers coming to take you away wasn’t a story on Tatooine, it was a frightening possibility.
What would Cliegg and Owen do? They would ask the other families for help. The Whitesuns, the Azzari, the Darklighters… that was the settlers’ rule: we help our own. Shmi liked that, even if it didn’t feel enough. What of the ones who weren’t their own? Who would help them?
Oh, her head hurt.
She hadn’t so much fallen asleep as lost consciousness. The pain woke her, but she wouldn’t stay awake long. Soon she slipped away again. Then awoke. Then slept.
Next, she awoke with wetness running down her legs. Shame filled her. Of all these things, sunburn and heat and thirst and cold, this one was the hardest to bear. As if she were an animal. The piss soaked into her skirt and the wet patch rubbed roughly on her skin.
The night was endless. She was queasy, held herself from throwing up. The thoughts in her head took on almost physical shapes, quarreling for space. The fear was stuck under her tongue, ever growing pebbles pushing against her jaw. She wasn’t sure where she was, who she was. She wasn’t sure whether her eyes were closed or open. Whether she was dreaming or awake. She drove herself to fear so sharp she had to bite her arm to stop from screaming.
At last, somehow, light had come again.
The suns were still hiding behind the horizon, but at least there was a horizon now. Her headache mellowed from unbearable to unpleasant. The air warmed. For a small, blissful moment, things felt almost alright. She closed her eyes and let sleep take her.
The suns woke her too soon for any real rest. As yesterday, she burned and thirsted. Today, her body was sore and her head pounded. Still? Again?
She didn’t remember what she told Cliegg, the morning she was taken. It took up a feverish intensity, churning in her mind through the haze of heat and pain. She did tell him something, before she left for the vaporators; she remembered him grunting in reply as she dressed in the corner of the room, her back turned to him in a habit she long ago gave up on breaking. She told him something. What was it? It might have been the last thing she said to him in her life. What was it?
In a moment, her body jerked itself awake again. She couldn’t sleep now. Where was she? There was something she was supposed to do. They would come and punish her.
She dragged her eyes open. The rough fur. She registered the bantha smell.
She wasn’t back at the scrapyard; not a house slave again, falling asleep over shelling beans; she wasn’t at Watto’s, struggling to complete an order on time. Her eyes welled with tears. Awake or asleep, both were nightmares. She couldn’t tell which was worse.
Another jerk. Anakin! Where was he? Where was her son?! She left him somewhere, she had to go back!
No. She was here. Anakin was–
Gone. No pain in the body could be as horrible as remembering that.
It had been years. It shouldn’t hurt anymore. She thought the pain would dull, knowing he had a chance at a future, however tentative. At first she hoped they would let her know, that Qui-Gon would… but then no message came. Days, weeks, years. And the pain didn’t get any weaker, but it was like a derelict ship buried by dunes. Its shape slowly obscured by sand drifts, until there were days when she never noticed it anymore. And then a storm would come and uncover it as if the time never passed.
For hours, her mind slipped between the present and the past. Sometimes she woke up afraid of the overseers; sometimes she remembered old friends, people from her childhood. Her mother, if that kind, tired face was her and not another slave.
Evening came, and the Tuskens again stopped. This time, no amount of shaking would rouse her enough to open her eyes. She felt fingers pry open her mouth and some bitter powder put on her tongue. She swallowed instinctively.
In a few moments, she felt her mouth burn, heart beat harder. When she tried, she could open her eyes. The world in front of her wavered. The Tusken - same as last night? she couldn’t tell - stared at her. They growled, then turned away and picked up another cracked gourd. She drank greedily.
After, they pushed at her a root of some kind. She thought she recognized it: a local plant they sometimes ate back at Gardulla’s, when the slave overseer skimmed from the budget too much and the food portions dwindled almost to nothingness. it was sour and bitter - or perhaps that was still the powder, lingering on her tongue.
She shivered. Whether from cold, fear or the effects of the powder, she couldn’t say. She pulled up the collar of her overshirt and hissed when the rough fabric touched her blistered skin.
The Tusken noticed. They grabbed her shoulder roughly and examined the skin. They poked it with one gloved finger and Shmi bit down her lip to stop herself from crying out. After a moment, they let go. They raised an arm and called out in that high pitched Tusken roar. One of the other Tuskens called back and came over. They handed her caretaker a length of cloth, and they wrapped it around her neck. Then, the both of them looked at her and discussed their handiwork with roars and sharp hand gestures. Finally, the second Tusken patted hers on the shoulder and left.
They didn’t stay in place any longer than they did last night. Soon the Tuskens loaded the banthas and they were on their way again.
Something has changed, though. Instead of keeping the same brisk pace of the last two days, the bantha underneath her walked slowly. Only when she looked up, did she finally notice the mountains. The flat ground rose until it was cut off by tall cliffs. The blocky shapes loomed at the horizon, dark patches against the bruised purple of the sky. That too was odd, Shmi realized now - last night they traveled long into the night until all the light was gone.
She had a fuzzy memory of a mountain range that formed the western border of the Great Chott. Weren’t they going East? Shmi felt more lucid than she did in days, and she still couldn’t understand. Why stop before the mountains? Why slow down? Weren’t they rushing toward the mountains to escape from pursuit?
They reached the first rocky outcroppings as the darkness fell. She could barely see them as silhouettes shadowing the star-sprayed sky. They wound their way into the mountains. The terrain was rough; if they followed a trail, Shmi couldn’t recognize it. She barely saw anything. The night was darker here, in the shadows of the mountains. All Shmi could do was listen. The thuds of bantha feet on the ground; clattering of the dislodged gravel; shuffling of fabric and fur.
A shriek split the quiet of the night. The banthas stopped. For a moment, everything was still. Then, the animals moved on. And that’s how they continued: a smallest sound would mean a stop and a breathless wait, until an unseen signal would get them to move again.
Instead of a sanctuary, the mountains were a place of acute danger for the Tuskens. Why? In all the stories the settlers told about the Sand People, this was the place where the raiders hid, the real reason why they managed to withstand all attempts to clear them from the area.
Whatever the Tusken gave her, it cleared up her headache and left her wide awake. With more energy, her fear returned - of the Sand People, but also of the unknown danger the Tuskens were afraid of. This wasn’t settler territory. Whatever they feared, it was unlikely to be less of a threat to her. She pressed down on the panic raising in her chest. She had nowhere to run.
She had nowhere to run!
As the night progressed, the effects of the powder wore off and her fear was replaced by bone-weary exhaustion. She fell into a fitful sleep, constantly interrupted by the stops. The scarf the Tusken gave her rubbed against her burnt neck. She knew she would be thankful of it come tomorrow, but it still hurt. She was so tired she could cry.
Whatever the Tuskens feared, it did not appear. The night passed, the sky brightened with incoming dawn, and the Tuskens prodded on the banthas almost to a trot. Soon after the suns rose above the mountains, the cliffs around them receded until they were on open ground again.
They stopped. Shmi turned her head to see what lay ahead of them. Past the bantha’s horns, the feet of the mountains fell down toward endless waves of sand.
There was something final in this moment. They would be crossing the dune sea, Shmi understood. Wherever they were going, it was far away from here.