#helbertinelli

Thanks Alice!

Hi, thanks for the ask! This one is from my Shmi Lives AU, in which Anakin and Padmé leave Naboo for Tatooine early enough to save Shmi's life. I've been working on this one for quite a while now (it's actually my oldest SW fic) but it's been supplanted by a couple of my new AUs atm, so hopefully once I've got a bit further with those, I'll be able to start working on it again.

***

The world coalesced into a swirling miasma of browns and yellows and whites as Shmi Skywalker stirred from her deep, healing slumber to the realisation that she was cocooned in softness and warmth, rather than the hardness of the rack before her and the sharp heat of pain to come behind her that had been all she'd known for what seemed like an age. She floated, hazily, only half wondering where she was, or if there even was a “where”. Last she remembered, she had been fading—fading so, so fast, with barely the strength or the will to hold on any longer. Was this what death felt like? This ultimate freedom, returned finally after trial upon trial to the warm, welcoming embrace of the desert sands? If so, it felt nice. Safe, uncomplicated. Perhaps the desert had shown her mercy in the end, guiding her into its arms with the sweetest of dreams.

And oh, it had been such a lovely dream, compared to the nightmare she had been living in those last weeks (months?, years?—really, what did it matter when time bled together so out in the Wastelands?). The soft brush of fingertips against her raw wrists as her bindings were undone, being pulled back into gentle arms, looking up to see— Oh Ani, oh Anakin, her grown-up son, come to her in her hour of need. He had been crying, tears glistening on his cheeks in the flickering torchlight of the tent. She remembered reaching out with a trembling hand, too weak to wipe them away, no matter how much she wanted to. She hadn't wanted her son to cry, not even in her dream. For what else could it have been but a dream? Anakin had been taken by the Jedi, and for all his innocent child's promise of returning for her, she had known that she would likely never see him again. Her boy had been meant for a far better life than she could give him on Tatooine. It would have been cruel to keep him, and impossible to come with him.

She began, idly, to wonder whether the image of the young man in her dream looked anything like the real Anakin, so far away and unreachable amongst the Jedi. So often, in dark moments where she could barely breathe for missing him—when Threepio thanked his Maker after some improbable escape from disaster, when she came across some fiddly repair she knew her little helper could have fixed in a heartbeat, or on the rare occasions when she heard whispers of the Jedi and their exploits on the tongues of gossipers in Mos Eisley and Mos Espa—she tried to conjure up an image of his face in her mind, imagine how he might look grown. But no matter how she tried, she couldn't do it. In her mind's eye, he was still the dusty little boy with sand in his hair from podracing and oil smudged on his nose from tinkering with his beloved machines. The only thing in her miserable life as a slave that had been precious, cherished. Her boy whom she had lost the chance to watch grow into a man. A chance that had never truly been hers to give.

It was an oddly sad thought for someone supposedly at peace in the desert's embrace, but as time stretched on, she was beginning to notice more aches and pains than just those in her heart. The lash marks on her back. The bruising to her ribs. The bloody cut on her cheek. Her limbs—yes, she could feel them now, heavy as unresponsive durasteel—were weak and leaden from long stretches without food or water, and her head... The light was like a nail driving through her skull as her eyes flickered open. She screwed them tight shut again with a groan, feeling faintly sick. Where before, she had been floating somewhere away from her body—somewhere safe and without pain—now she was crashing in free-fall into all her injuries and agonies, all the brutalities that had been rained down upon her during her captivity. Weak, pained, yet miraculously, inexplicably alive.

Part of her wanted to cry, but the last of her tears had dried up long ago. Another part of her wanted to panic, but that continued feeling of softness and warmth kept the urge at bay. Instead, she took in several deep breaths, wincing as the pain in her ribs flared, and tried to fight down the sensation of nausea rising from her stomach and up into her throat. Calm. Stay calm,she thought. You need to know where you are. You need—With one last deep, shuddering breath, she forced herself to open her eyes again, watching as that miasma of brown-yellow-white converged into a familiar—

Oh.

She was home. She was at the moisture farm, in her and Cliegg's bed. She was home, with her husband and her step-son and her step-son's intended, not out in the Wastelands in the Tusken camp, surrounded by people who wished her nothing but harm upon harm—

She froze as she felt something soft—something that was not the coarse bedsheets around her that nevertheless felt as smooth as silk after her endless weeks of imprisonment—brush lightly against the bare skin of her forearm. Hair. There was a warm weight resting against the mattress beside her. Beru? With her experience in healing, she would have been the one to tend to her, surely? Or perhaps her husband, Cliegg, waiting for her to wake, or even Owen, warm and affectionate and relieved underneath the no-nonsense gruffness that he was fast inheriting from his father with each year that passed? Oh, she had missed them so much, the grief she knew that they would feel at her passing mingling with her own pain once she had lost all hope of rescue, sure that she would die in that horrid place. How she longed to lay eyes on them all again, to reassure and be reassured in turn. To know that she was safe and free amongst them once more.

With what felt like a monumental effort, she shifted her head to the side, stiff, torn muscles screaming in protest as she fixed her gaze on the still figure, sprawled over the edge of the bed, deeply asleep. It was not Beru, nor Cliegg, nor Owen. The hair tickling against her forearm was a dark, sandy blond, cut short save for at the back, where it was pulled into a little tail, and at the temple, from which a long, thin braid fell haphazardly over a startlingly young, handsome face, open and relaxed in sleep. The same face from her dream—but no, she realised, not a dream, for he was really here, really beside her and he was—

“Anakin” she breathed—or rather, rasped, her voice hoarse and ruined from screaming and crying and long hours of sleep. It was so faint that it could barely even be called a whisper, and Anakin did not so much as stir at the murmur of his name. For it was Anakin, she was sure. It was Anakin. She knew it now as surely as she had when he had taken her in his arms in the Tusken camp, calling her again and again, begging her to stay awake as he choked through tears. How, she didn't know, but somehow, somehow, her brilliant, impossible child had known to come to her. And he had saved her.

Obi-Wan is brave in a lot of ways, but this is not one them. It takes Satine a few weeks to realise if she wants to kiss Obi-Wan she gonna have to be the one to initiate it.

103. Favourite character from Prequals?

Anakin Skywalker!!!! That’s my son and I love him ❤️ The story of Star Wars revolves around him and he’s one of the most fleshed out, complex and fascinating characters in Star Wars. His importance to the franchise is highly important and without him the saga would not be the same. This isn’t to say others aren’t important because there are many important characters, but Anakin is one of the most important in-universe and the saga as a whole.

4. Favourite character from original trilogy?

Luke Skywalker. The face of Star Wars and the main catalyst of the Skywalker saga. I genuinely love how Luke didn’t opt to kill his father, his own flesh and blood and instead wanted to believe in him because he knew there was goodness in him, that there was a light sparkling inside of him even when Anakin himself believed it to be gone forever. Luke’s not a typical male hero for his era and I love every bit of it. He chose compassion, forgiveness and love over revenge, violence and hatred, which at the time (’70s and ‘80s) was the common go-to for most film/TV heroes, but Luke was different from them and that’s why I believe he stands out from the rest of the heroes from his time and why he’s still so memorable and iconic after our first introduction to him 44 years ago.

8. Weapon of choice?

Lightsaber :P I like elegants weapons for a more civilized age, I guess ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

10. Which character do you feel is most like you?

Oh lawd LOL

Tim use that gif when your blog gets back up pls

She really did. She only ever cared about what she wanted over her duties as the Avatar. Mako was her main priority in Book 1 and the Equalists sort of fell by the wayside. Keeping the Spirit Portals open was literally done because Korra didn’t want to be the bridge between worlds so she forced everyone to accept her choice due to her own laziness.