Chapter Text
Anakin Skywalker is four years old and the desert is all he knows. The desert, the loving hand of his mother and the unforgiving hand of his master. But the desert drowns it all out with its burning sand and the tricks it plays on you, simmering twin suns above. Leaving no escape, only an eternity of sand.
When he wakes up at night, damp with sweat and heart still beating fast from his nightmare and he hesitantly shakes his mother awake, she asks him what the dream was about. Red. He remembers red. Glowing. Hot. “Burning sand,“ he says. “Burning sand everywhere.”
His mother soothingly strokes his hair. “Oh, Ani,” she whispers, love and heartbreak in her voice. Sometimes he can’t remember if she has always sounded like this. “You‘re a desert child”, she continues, “don’t you know what that means?”
Anakin shakes his head. It could mean many things: sand in your teeth, the blistering heat of the suns, the chains of a slave. His mother smiles, it almost looks sad.
“It means that the desert won’t ever let you go. It means it will protect you with all its might. It will guide you if only you trust in it.”
Ani doesn’t believe her. Maybe the part about not letting him go. He’s a slave after all, so why not a slave to the desert, too. But trusting in the desert? No, he’ll just be swallowed whole. The desert is always hungry, that much he knows.
Despite his doubts, he nods, feigning understanding.
His mother huffs a tiny laugh.
“You’ll see.” And just for the short spark of happiness in her, he vows to try.
Still, the desert is always on his mind. But when he closes his eyes, all he sees are the stars. He dreams of flying, anything to shed his chains. That’s when he decides, he will be free and he’ll free his mother and then he’ll free all the slaves. I’ll free us all , he thinks to himself, as his mother continues to hold him and he falls back into a dreamless sleep.
In the dark of the night, the desert sings.
~
He’s nine when he first lies to his mother and sneaks away to join the Boonta Eve Classic. He feels sick to his stomach—that’s guilt, a tiny voice in his head whispers—but the fast drum of his heartbeat swallows it all. He’s going to fly. Finally, he’s going to fly.
He leaves footprints in the sand and as he glances behind him to see if his mother has noticed him slipping away, it almost looks like the sand is dancing with the wind.
Remembering his mother’s words— desert child— he bows his head.
“Father,” he whispers, unsure.
The sand continues to dance.
He doesn’t know what to make of it, so he turns back around and makes his way to the race. He can‘t get there fast enough, stumbling over his own feet, almost falling, but the wind picks him up, carries him. At least that’s what it feels like.
Anakin has raced before, for Watto, but he’s never finished the race with anything but cuts and bruises, the wreck that was Watto’s pod, and the blood between his teeth. That is, if you count surviving the race as finishing, because he’s never actually crossed the finish line. But today will be different, Anakin knows. He feels it deep in his bones, tastes it in the air he breathes. He doesn’t think about the aftermath. Nothing on his mind but the moment, flying and the desert. Always the desert.
Joining the race is easier than expected. He has raced for Watto often enough that they don’t question him when he shows up and if they notice that he has a different pod racer, they don‘t care enough to investigate. Nobody cares enough about silly little slave boys.
In the end, winning is almost easier than sneaking into the race. Well, maybe not easy. But it feels right, like it was the only possible outcome. He will never forget those few seconds of pure joy, when he finally did it. He did it! And if he can be the first human to win a podrace, then who’s to say he can’t do anything he wants.
In the distance, Anakin can make out the vast dune sea. Nothing but waves of sand. He closes his eyes, suddenly overcome with emotion and offers it all up. Thankfulness, joy, love, the little taste of freedom. He doesn’t want to at first, clutching it close to his chest as the voice in his head screams that’s mine. But then he remembers his mother, her sad smile and her kind words. He lets it all go, albeit reluctantly. A sign of faith.
For a moment, it feels like the desert offers him something back, caresses him and he feels as if he’s been enveloped in a blanket of warmth and love. He feels like he’s going to burst from it, because it’s so much. Too much almost but still he yearns. He wants—
A heavy hand settles around his neck, claws painfully digging into his skin, drawing blood and Anakin snaps back to reality. When he opens his eyes, Watto is there, a dangerous smile on his lips. Anakin tries to swallow down the dread that suddenly appears in his throat and makes it harder to breathe. He chokes on it.
It all goes downhill from there. Watto has him beaten black and blue, his hands are whipped, and it will take weeks before Anakin can hold anything without dropping it in an instant because his hands keep seizing up. They take everything from him.
Watto is angry, oh so angry. Anakin has lost him a lot of money and now he wants it back. He confiscates Anakin’s pod as compensation and flies menacingly up into his face, wearing a smile that has him bearing his teeth.
“I want you gone,” he spits in Huttese. “Tomorrow you’ll be delivered to your new master.”
The dread returns, pooling in his stomach. New master?
“What about my mother?” Anakin whispers.
Watto, who has already turned to fly away from him, looks over his shoulder.
“What do you think?” He is still wearing that ugly grin.
They take everything: his pod, his mother, even his droid.
The last night with his mother he spends frantically tweaking the last few bits and pieces on C-3PO, tears stinging in his eyes. Even if Anakin won’t be there to look after her, maybe Threepio can.
Jabba’s men come and take him in the morning.
~
As much as Watto had liked to overwork him, at least he had made Anakin feel like a person. Jabba doesn’t. When Jabba looks at him, all he sees is a thing— the thought leaves a bitter taste in Anakin’s mouth.
That’s why he is all too aware that he has one singular purpose: make Jabba money and once he stops doing that, it’ll be either the pit for him or maybe he’ll just get blown up if Jabba is feeling merciful that day.
So he bows his head—he’s good at that—and tries to swallow his pride—less good at that. Strange how he’s never been his own person, how he’s always belonged to everyone but himself and yet, he refuses to let go of his pride.
Desert child. It echoes in his mind with reverence. Maybe that will be his downfall. If Jabba doesn’t grow tired of him first.
The collar around his neck is heavy and more than just ornamental. Of course Jabba is fond of collars, especially on his dancing girls; a sign of his mastery but it’s also something to tear them down with, make them feel with every sharp breath that they are owned and worthless. Anakin wears his with gritted teeth and part of him suspects that’s why he has to wear it. They all seem to delight in the fact that he struggles with his fate every day. That is, of course, until he doesn’t do his job convincingly enough or they take the firm way his jaw is set as a sign of defiance, even as he kneels before Jabba’s throne.
However, the second he sits down in his pod—well, Jabba’s pod—and takes off, he leaves it all behind. The days on end without food; when they break his fingers, because they know that even if his home might be the winds and the sky, once he’s grounded his home is the workshop; the way he’s forced to demean himself in front of them. He leaves it all behind down in the sand as he races the wind.
Anakin has realised early that they will use his love to punish him. Everyday he sends his gratitude to the desert and the twin suns that Jabba doesn’t know about his mother. And that is exactly the reason why Anakin won’t ever be able to see her again. He could sneak out of course, he does that quite often now, but the risk of one of Jabba’s men spotting him and discovering his mother is just too high. He can live with the fact that she was taken from him, but at least knowing that Watto won’t cause her unnecessary harm is a small relief. After all, with Jabba as the alternative...
He used to dream about her. Every night. Benign things like her cooking dinner or chatting with Threepio. But then the dreams about the desert came back and took over his nights.
Every now and then something else manages to break through and he dreams about robed figures with swords of light, Jeedai— he wants them to be Jeedai but he’s long been resigned to the fact that the Jedi won’t come to save them, won’t come to save him— and an angel without wings, smiling at him.
He doesn’t know what to make of them either.
The desert dreams however, he understands. It’s the desert calling him, reaching out, longing brushing against his mind in slow never-ending waves.
It takes him a couple of months until he sneaks out for the first time, only daring once he’s relatively sure nobody will catch him or if they do, they might consider him enough of an asset to Jabba to not blow him up without a second thought. There’s not many slaves that survive straying too far from their master’s home.
The desert night is cold and leaves him shivering as he makes his way into the dune sea. It looks strange at night, tinted blue and frightening but Anakin has never felt safer. It starts slowly with the sand dancing in soft pirouettes around his feet but the farther he goes into the desert, the more the sand dances and slowly that warm feeling returns.
He’d almost forgotten it but now he wonders how he could’ve forgotten such a marvellous thing. Like walking into a loving embrace , he thinks to himself and chuckles softly. He continues, lets himself be guided by the warmth as if he’s being pulled by a string. After what feels like hours but could‘ve been minutes, he abruptly halts. This is where he was meant to go, he just knows it.
Desert child.
The thought echoes in his mind like it has so often before, but this time it doesn’t feel like one of his own. Not sure how to proceed, Anakin bows his head and makes an offering, like he did on Boonta Eve. Trust. Faith, still new and alien and a bit shaky. He lets it all go, a gift for the desert. The wind rises, blowing through his hair, reminiscent of how his mother used to do the same with her fingers.
Hours pass and Anakin just sits there, listening, feeling. Eventually he gets up and returns to Jabba’s palace, sneaking in before the first dawn. Strangely, he doesn’t feel tired at all.
Anakin returns to the desert as often as he can risk it. Listening to what it is willing to teach him.
Slowly he learns.