Chapter Text
Anakin Skywalker was never truly alone.
Not in the slave quarters where dust clung to every surface and fear clung to every breath.
Not in the junkyards with their rusted metal and the stinging of scraped palms.
Not even in the dead of night when the heat still pressed like a weight against his chest, and his sitll-developing mind worked to process the horrors of the day - the twi'lek slave beaten for being too slow, the woman killed for stealing a loaf of bread to feed her children, the togruta teenager pulled from the streets of Mos Espa and sold to the highest bidder.
How could he possibly be alone? She was always there.
She had always been there, of course. Not beside him - not physically - but in a way that he couldn't explain. In his dreams. She shimmered at the edges of his awareness like starlight, soft and constant. He could feel her laughter like warmth on his skin, different from the cruel burn of Tatooine's suns. Her joy would radiate in his chest like sunlight through stained glass, leaving him covered in the colors of the mosaics, showing him colors he never could have dreamed. He didn't know her name, not truly, not until a year or so after he'd been freed, but he knew her happiness. And just as easily, he knew her pain - sudden, icy, and slicing through him anytime something was wrong. He couldn’t explain why, but he just knew what those strange sensations meant, even if they were planets apart. Warmth meant she was happy. And cold? Cold was wrong.
He had told his mother about his dreams... about the girl radiating sunlight. About how her laughter was infectious, and how her smile was brighter than the twin suns. He'd told her about her seemingly never-ending optimism, even when she was sad. And his mother had just smiled and told him that she was glad that his friend was helping him. But her eyes told him that she didn't believe him - that the girl wasn't real. Anakin could see it; he could hear it in her voice.
So he never told his mother about the physical feelings he had - about how a candle was lit between his ribs anytime she was ecstatic, or how he felt as if his chest became ground zero for a blizzard anytime she was upset. He never told his mother how he could tell how she was feeling based on whatever temperature flew through his chest at any given moment. Some things were his. Sacred. Unspoken.
Over time, the girl in his dreams became more than just a comfort. She became a reason - his reason - to keep going. When his knees bled from the work yard, when he cut himself on scrap metal in Watto's shop, when his master raised his hand... anytime he felt small and powerless in a galaxy that was too big to care, the mystery girl was there. She waited behind his eyelids at the end of each day - a breath of peace on a barren wasteland of a planet that offered none. And just that fact managed to fill him with enough courage to continue on with his day, no matter how terrible it was.
And comparing her warmth to the twin suns of Tatooine? It wasn't enough. Because she wasn't just a warm presence. She was radient. Like light itself. Her hair was as red as firelight, her green eyes always dancing with childlike wonder. She was like an angel, he'd realized.
Always smiling. Always laughing. Her world was so bright, and she was so... so free. He watched nightly as she colored on walls rather than in books, or twirled in skirts like a princess among a mound of plush toys while declaring her power with the confidence of a queen.
"I can do anything!" She'd cry to her kingdom of stuffed animals, a plastic crown on her brow. "I'm the princess!"
He believed her.
He saw her go stargazing in open fields beneath skies so clear he could hardly imagine them. The stars dotted the skies above her almost as if a painter had simply flung small drops of paint all over a canvas - they were everywhere, so much so that he could see what he assumed to be the arm of the galaxy. A rare sight, except for in the most remote regions of planets in the outer rim.
Part of him longed to know if that was where he could find her. The outer rim.
Her joy in that moment was infectious, immediately lighting a small fire behind his ribs and warming itself into his very soul. He woke that next morning with tears on his cheeks and the echoes of her laughter in his ears, though he couldn't pinpoint why.
"I want to go see the lights!" she'd squeeled, pointing up at the stars. "The stars are so pretty! Can we go there, Daddy?"
"No, sweetheart," her father had answered with a chuckle, a glint of amusement in his eyes. "Only astronauts can explore space because they have their big, poofy suits. It's a dangerous place."
She was quiet for a moment as if contemplating his words. But then she beamed up at her father, her grin wider than ever before as she proudly announced to her family, "Then I'll be an ash-tro-not one day, so I can see space for real!"
Anakin had marveled at her wonder. He had seen ships come and go every day from Mos Espa's ports, but it almost seemed as if space was magical to her. Untouched. Full of adventure and possibilities, where anything was possible. He didn't quite see what the big deal was, though. Space travel was common. Even to outer rim planets. Surely, she'd at least seen a ship before.
But still, he found himself wanting to be the one to show it to her. Not the broken, greedy parts of the galaxy, per se. Not places like Tatooine, which only knew how to take and take from others. He wanted to show her the wonders of the galaxy, starting with the stars that shimmered just for her.
He wanted to find her. To meet her. He wanted to prove to his mother that she was real, and that she wasn't some imaginary friend that his mind had pieced together in some desperate attempt to make him feel normal, as if he hadn't been born in chains. To help him stay sane on a planet that couldn't care less how he felt, so long as he could walk, lift, or speak. But he didn't just need to prove it to his mother...
He needed to prove it to himself.
Shortly after that realization, he had started experimenting with different materials he was able to smuggle from Watto's shop. Wires, screws, cracked screens, circuit boards. He wanted to build a scanner. So he tried. Time and time again, he dug into circuits with trembling fingers, trying to find a way to free the explosive chip from his body - from his mother's body - so that they could escape. So that he could find her, and show her the stars that she desperately wanted to see.
And then... the Jedi came. Qui-gon Jinn arrived practically at his dorstep, and set Anakin free. All it took was one bet. One pod-race. And Anakin was free to leave his home.
Anakin did not hesitate. He did not look back, though leaving his mother left a gaping wound in his heart - one that would one day fester and ooze and bleed into his very soul, whether he realized it or not. He went with the jedi.
Why?
Because he knew three things for certain:
He would become a jedi.
He would return to Tatooine and free his mother.
And then he would find the mystery girl, the girl who longed for the stars, and who unknowingly kept him alive during his time on Tatooine. The one who made him believe he could be more than a slave.
The girl who made him feel love before he even knew what love was.
He would find her, he swore to himself. And she wouldn't just be a dream... not anymore.