Prologue II
Three weeks passed before Watto notified me he'd received a transmission that the Jedi would be arriving before sundown. Despite his leg and back injuries, he was floating and bouncing all over the shop like a super-ball on a string.
He'd been cagey about exactly how much the Jedi had agreed to pay whenever I'd asked. Saying only "Your mother won't need to scrub memory cores any longer. Now, go lord it over those other street-rats you're always running off with or something!"
I couldn't deny I was riding a high. Yes, I had the mind of an adult and an amazing sensitivity to the Force, but try surviving for nearly three years as the slave of an alien who thinks the definition of child-abuse is leaving one's child-slave permanently incapable of performing their duties.
Children can handle being smaller and weaker than literally everyone around them because they don't know anything else! Squeezing the mind of a thirty year old into the nearly defenseless body of an almost-toddler nearly cost me my sanity.
Especially once I realized I literally could not afford the slightest deviation from Anakin's child-life as I knew it. I'd been enslaved by the need to not change anything which might inadvertently prevent the Jawa from showing up with the Sith Holocron as surely as I had been by the explosive device implanted in my body.
The minute the clueless Jawa had shown me the red and black cube, it had taken everything in me not to give the game away to the little trader. All I'd wanted to do was weep tears of joy and relief, but I'd somehow managed to play it cool and fork over my three wupiupi before hurrying away to hide the key to mine and Shmi's freedom.
Shmi. Thinking of her wiped the smile from my face as I stopped pestering Watto and slipped into the back of the shop to finish working on a power-droid. The woman was a saint who adored me, but I couldn't muster more than an awkward affection and sense of responsibility toward and for her.
She wasn't my mother, but it hurt me every time our failure to connect grew obvious enough to pain her. Always she'd try to hide that pain from me, and if I couldn't literally feel her emotions there were many times she might have been successful in doing so. Meaning around and around the carousel of dysfunctional family life went.
Now, I would be taking her little boy away from her more than three years earlier than she'd lost him before.
My hands identified, repaired, or replaced damaged components almost of their own accord as I told myself Shmi was going to be far, far better off than she would otherwise have been. Removed from Tatooine and ensconced somewhere safe like Onderon/Legends or Chardaan , there would be no capture, torture and death at the hands of the Tuskens.
It just had to be somewhere that this nest egg from the Jedi could see her through until the woman found her feet. Meaning no Core or Colony worlds where a hundred thousand credits or so could evaporate before one knew it.
Lost in finishing work on the first droid and beginning on the next, it was only the Force which prevented me from jumping in surprise as a calm, genuinely friendly and soft-spoken man remarked from behind me.
"This is incredibly complex work for someone your age, Anakin. Your hands were flying about the inside of that droid's exoskeleton. Almost as if you could sense what was wrong with it, and what needed to be done to mend it without your conscious attention. Does that happen to you often? Where you simply know things?"
I wanted to say "Do you mean am I Force-sensitive? Of course I am, or did the fact you just watched a five year old completely retrofit an incredibly complex piece of technology without the slightest bit of vocational training somehow lead you to another equally reasonable theory fitting the circumstances before you?"
I wanted to spit out that bit of snark, but as I turned and beheld Liam Neeson in his trademark beige poncho I felt the tool fall from my hand to clatter loudly on the rough stone floor.
It had never occurred to me that Qui-Gon Jinn/Legends might still end up encountering me despite my alteration of the timeline, but there he was. Radiating that almost fatherly warmth, and with that small smile that quietly proclaimed this was a man at peace with himself and the universe around him.
After a moment the Jedi's smile grew smaller, and his expression more obvious expectant. Prompting me to pull myself together and answer the question.
"Y- yes, I often dream of things that happen later, or get flashes of something about to happen so I can avoid getting hit. I can tell what people are feeling if I try, and sometimes even when I don't.
There's linking up with Watto's pod-racer, and just within the last couple of months I figured out how to move things by thinking about it. Well, that's not a very good explanation of that last, but I think you know what I mean, Master Jedi.
I didn't get your name, sir, but Watto obviously told you mine." My answer was detailed, but not so detailed I hoped that it would make him think something wasn't right here.
Frowning, Qui-Gon immediately asked in a far more serious tone "It wasn't a voice from inside the red and black cube which showed you how to move things with the Force, was it? You won't be in any kind of trouble if it was. I just need to know so I can keep everyone safe."
Shaking my head emphatically, I replied with as much certainty as I could squeeze into this high childish voice.
"No, it only spoke to me twice. When I told it I knew the symbol on it's side meant Forbidden Knowledge, and that I would never try to open it, the voice tried to convince me to do just that one more time, then left me alone entirely.
It wasn't long after that, when I convinced Watto to free me and my mother, plus share the money you're giving him for it with us. I was the one who found it, you see."
The smile returned to the Jedi's face, as I could feel his sense of relief. He nodded, then seemed to change the subject. If I hadn't had my knowledge of events to rely on, and been an adult in a child's body besides I would have missed the connection as he withdrew a small silver pipette-like device from a pouch on his belt before asking.
"My name is Qui-Gon Jinn, Anakin, and I would like to take a sample of your blood. Once I have it analyzed by the computer aboard my ship, I'll know whether there are any infections lurking in your system.
Something which is important, if my Padawan and I are to take you and your mother off-planet. You'd like that, wouldn't you? Your mother wouldn't have to spend a large amount of the money Watto just gave her on transportation that way."
"I wouldn't mind at all, Master Jinn, but I thought we were talking about my strange talents? I would like to know how much you paid Watto, but the important thing is to get away from here. Tatooine is a bad place, you know?" I thought my reply threaded the needle of childish enough to be convincing, yet precocious enough to keep the Jedi Master deeply interested.
"The Jedi Order instructed me to pay the Toydarian the equivalent of one point two five million credits in aurodium ingots in exchange for the box. My padawan paid your mother 162, 250 credits.
I asked your mother where she might want to go, and she told me her grandfather was from Birren. Said she thought she might like to settle there." The explanation was as much a test as it was an exchange of information, so I made sure not to disappoint.
"You're talking as if I'm not going with her, sir. Is there a reason for that?" I inquired with a child's bluntness.
Rather than respond immediately, Qui-Gon reached out and drew the blood sample with the device in his hand. The one I knew he was using to check my midichlorian levels. "Boy, is he in for a bit of a shock" I thought to myself. Knowing it wouldn't be that big a shock.
Especially since I'd just closed my eyes, let the trilling music of the Force nearly at rest flow through me, then levitated the repaired power-droid from the bench to make a brief circle about the two of us. I set it down immediately, because lifting something like that caused an odd tightness in my temples.
Almost as if I were doing something my body wasn't quite ready for.
The Jedi Master didn't comment aloud on my stunt. He simply made his excuses after promising we'd talk again and got out of the room as quickly as possible.
Which was of course Shmi's cue to come rushing in. Her joy at being emancipated and given more money than she ever thought to possess both clear on her face and pouring from her like a stirring, upbeat ballad via my empathy.
"Anakin! The Jedi just came through for us. We're both free now, and the Jedi even said they'd take us to Birren on their way back to Coruscant. I never gave up hoping a day like this would come, but now that it has, I, I don't know what to do, I'm so happy!"
I smiled as big and warm a smile as I could at her, then dashed over and threw my arms around my "mother." Whatever my issues, I'd be damned if I robbed her of the celebration of mutual freedom with her little boy she'd obviously dreamed of.
It felt the tiniest bit dishonest, not trying to prepare her for what I knew was coming, but all that would do is taint these moments. The memory of which she was likely going to need in the days to come.
Early the next morning Qui-Gon and a Padawan Ewan McGregor sought us out at the hovel where the two of us lived. Obi-Wan looked a little unsettled, but Qui-Gon's smile was as warm and welcoming as it had been the day before.
The Jedi Master was the very soul of courtesy as he asked to be invited in, and when Shmi did just that he walked over to me and quietly said.
"I think you've probably dreamed about what happens next. Would you like to tell us all about it, Anakin?"
Looking first to Shmi, then at Obi-Wan, and finally up at Qui-Gon, I very quietly proffered "You're going to ask me if I want to become a Jedi. If I say yes, then it will just be mother you take to Birren. If I say no, then I think bad things happen. The dream was really dark and scary."
The middle-aged Jedi Master's blue-gray eyes contained a bit of sadness as he obviously felt the welter of emotions within me, but he didn't say anything to try and prod me towards one decision or the other. Shmi momentarily looked stricken, then that brave face was back, as she came to stand behind me and put her hands on my shoulders. In a quiet, comforting voice full of love she said.
"I think you should say yes, Anakin. The Jedi can teach you to use your gifts to help others like no one else can. I'll be all right, you know. It's a big decision, but one I think is right for you."
Looking up and over my shoulder at her, I smiled a sad smile, then turned back to face the Jedi and say.
"I'll go with you, Master Jinn. I want to protect others from ending up in the kind of trouble me and my mother did. I'd also like to stop the kind of people who make boxes like that one from making any more, and keep foolish people from listening to such voices."
I could see my simple words had touched Qui-Gon deeply, but a look of tense contemplation flickered across his face so fast I almost thought I'd imagined it.
He seemed calm and collected, but my overactive empathy was telling me the Jedi Master was exercising all his considerable will and skill to control his emotions. Unsurprising, given the man's deep-seated convictions concerning the Prophecy of the Chosen One.
Obi-Wan was looking more than a little nervous as he asked the question I wanted an answer to as well.
"Master, my own training isn't nearly complete. Have you given thought to who might train the, to who might train Anakin here? He's what, six years old? He'll be behind the other initiates for some time, and require remedial training."
Favoring his padawan with a momentary smile, Qui-Gon replied "The solution to the quandary you allude to replied to my transmission last night. Which is why we will be taking Anakin to Cophrigin V .
One of my old friends has agreed to take him on as her apprentice. Which neatly sidesteps the Council and precludes other problems."
The tall, handsome padawan looked as lost as I wished I was. My stomach was busy tying itself in knots as I considered the prospect of being trained by An'ya Kuro .
I knew Qui-Gon was right to keep me away from Coruscant until I'd had some discipline, humility, and skill ground into me, but the prospect of being fresh meat for the harshest trainer of Padawans presently living was a grim one.
Yet the die was cast, and soon the Jedi were ushering us both aboard their ship. Our meager possessions barely filling one bag, and a second case containing the dozen aurodium ingots which represented Shmi's future in hand.
Smiling at my genuine delight as I observed the ship first leave orbit, then prepare for the first of several jumps to hyperspace, I didn't miss the momentary spike of trepidation which ran through Qui-Gon like a tuning fork which had just been powerfully struck.
I knew exactly how he felt, for that matter.