The speeder returned at dawn.
Padmé heard it before she saw it—the distant whine cutting through the stillness of the desert, growing louder, heavier. She stood at the edge of the homestead with Owen and Beru, the air already warming beneath the rising suns. K2 and HK stood behind her, silent and immobile, their optics fixed on the horizon.
The speeder crested the final dune and slowed.
Anakin dismounted without a word.
He carried her.
Shmi Skywalker lay in his arms, wrapped carefully in a cloak, her body held with a tenderness that seemed almost reverent. Sand clung to Anakin's boots and armor. His mask hid his face, but his posture told Padmé everything—rigid, controlled, as though if he loosened even slightly, he might collapse entirely.
Owen swallowed hard. Beru's hand flew to her mouth.
Cliegg Lars emerged from the homestead.
The moment he saw Shmi, his shoulders sagged, as though the last fragile hope he'd carried had finally given way.
"She's…?" Cliegg asked, though the answer was already written in the way Anakin held her.
Anakin nodded once.
"I'm sorry," he said. His voice was steady, but only just.
They buried her that morning.
The grave was simple, carved into the sand not far from the homestead, where the suns would touch it first each day. Owen and Beru worked quietly, reverently. Cliegg sat as straight as he could, his eyes never leaving the place where she would rest.
Anakin placed her into the grave himself.
He knelt, removing his mask at last, and for a moment Padmé saw him completely unguarded—his face drawn tight with grief, eyes red and hollow, scars standing out starkly against his skin. He brushed a strand of Shmi's hair back from her face with infinite care.
"I came back," he whispered, so softly only she could hear. "I promised."
The sand fell gently over her, grain by grain, until she was gone from sight.
Padmé stood beside him as they said their final goodbyes. She didn't speak—there were no words that could fit a moment like this—but she stayed close, her presence a quiet promise that he wasn't alone.
When it was over, the Lars family retreated into the homestead, grief pressing in on them from every angle.
Padmé remained.
Anakin did not follow them.
He paced near the edge of the compound, boots cutting shallow tracks into the sand. The Force stirred around him, restless and heavy, like heat rising off stone. It wasn't violent—not yet—but it was there, coiling just beneath the surface.
Padmé watched him for a long moment before speaking.
"Annie," she said gently. "Tell me what happened."
He stopped.
For a heartbeat, he didn't turn.
Then he did.
His eyes were dark—not with corruption, but with something rawer. Pain layered over pain, fury tangled with loss so tightly they could no longer be separated.
"I was angry," he said. "Furious. I could feel it burning through me. I could feel her pain, Padmé. Every scream. Every moment."
His hands curled into fists at his sides.
"When I found her… when she died in my arms…" His voice faltered, then hardened again. "I couldn't stop it."
Padmé stepped closer.
"I slaughtered them," Anakin said, the words spilling out now, unstoppable. "The Tuskens. All of them. The men. The women. The children."
He laughed once, sharp and broken, and dragged a hand through his hair.
"And I hated them," he said. "I hated them so much—and I liked it. I reveled in it."
The words seemed to drain the strength from him all at once.
Anakin slid down against the outer wall of the homestead, armor scraping softly against stone, and buried his face in his hands.
"What's wrong with me?" he whispered. "What kind of person feels that way?"
Padmé knelt beside him without hesitation.
She pulled his hands away from his face and wrapped her arms around him, holding him tightly as his composure finally shattered. His shoulders shook. A sound tore from his chest that was half-sob, half-suppressed scream, and he leaned into her as though she were the only thing keeping him upright.
She held him.
Rocked him slightly.
Let him cry.
"It's natural," she said softly, pressing a kiss to his temple, then his cheek. "You loved her. Of course you're angry. Of course you're hurting."
He clutched at her robes, desperate, like a child again for just a moment.
"I don't want to be this," he said hoarsely.
"You're not," Padmé replied without hesitation. She kissed his forehead, lingering there. "Pain doesn't make you evil. Love doesn't make you weak. Hate can come from love when something precious is taken from you."
She pulled back just enough to look into his eyes.
"And I love you," she said. "All of you. Even this part that's hurting."
Anakin's breathing slowly steadied. The tension in the air eased—not gone, but softened, anchored by her presence. He rested his forehead against her shoulder, eyes closed, letting the storm inside him quiet just a little.
The suns climbed higher over Tatooine, casting long shadows across the sand.
Shmi Skywalker lay at rest.
And Anakin Skywalker wept in the arms of the woman who loved him—standing at the edge of a path that would one day demand far more than grief alone.
///
The burial had ended hours ago, but the sand still clung to Anakin's boots.
Tatooine did that. It never let go cleanly. It followed you into homes, into memory, into grief. It worked its way into every seam until even mourning felt abrasive.
The Lars homestead had gone quiet. Owen and Beru had retreated inside with the sort of silence only fresh loss could produce. Cliegg sat near the entry room, his face hollowed by exhaustion. Padmé stood farther back, watching Anakin the way she had watched him all morning—careful, loving, and worried enough that it ached to look at her.
Anakin had changed out of his armor.
Not because he wanted to appear gentler. Not because grief had softened him.
Because he needed to move.
He wore dark traveler's clothing now, lighter than the armored layers he had ridden into the desert in. His mask was back on. It always came back on in the end. The familiar weight of Revan's face over his own gave his pain edges. Boundaries. Somewhere to put it.
He stood near the table where Cliegg still sat and said, without preamble, "I'm going to Jabba's."
Cliegg looked up sharply.
"To Jabba?" he repeated. "What for?"
Anakin's voice came low and filtered through the mask.
"There are things I need answered."
Padmé moved a little closer. "Annie—"
He lifted a hand, not to silence her, but to ask for a moment.
Cliegg studied him for a long time.
The old farmer's eyes lingered on the mask, the posture, the calm that looked too controlled to be natural. He had seen grief before. Seen men drink it. Seen them break beneath it. But what sat before him now was something stranger: a young man holding himself together by force of will alone.
"You think this has something to do with that Wookiee?" Cliegg said.
Anakin turned his head.
"Yes."
Cliegg exhaled through his nose and shifted in his chair. "I told you what I know."
"I know," Anakin said. "And I believe you."
"Then leave it."
That made Anakin still.
Cliegg gripped his cane tighter. "You buried your mother this morning, boy. Don't go walking into a Hutt's palace tonight looking for another grave."
Anakin stepped closer to the table.
"When my mother was taken," he said quietly, "Black Krrsantan was supposed to be there."
The room seemed to draw inward around the words.
"He wasn't," Anakin continued. "And somebody made sure of that."
Cliegg's jaw tightened. "Even if that's true, you can't undo what happened."
"No," Anakin said. "But I can decide what happens next."
The words were steady. Too steady.
Padmé had heard that tone before—on Coruscant, beneath the broken window after the kouhuns; on Naboo, in the moments when Anakin spoke very softly because what he was feeling was too large to name directly.
Cliegg looked away first.
"You're like her," he muttered.
Anakin frowned faintly. "My mother?"
"She decided things the same way." Cliegg's voice roughened. "Once Shmi made her mind up, there was no shifting her."
A long silence passed.
Then Cliegg nodded toward the door.
"If you're going," he said, "then go before I decide I've got enough sense to stop you."
Anakin inclined his head once.
"I'll come back."
Cliegg gave a bleak, humorless half-smile. "That's what she used to say."
That hit harder than it should have.
Anakin turned away before the old man could see it.
Padmé followed him outside.
The suns had begun their slow descent, painting the edges of the dunes in copper and blood-orange. The heat was easing, but only barely. Tatooine held warmth long after the day had ended, like a wound that refused to close.
They stopped beside the speeder.
For a moment neither of them spoke.
Padmé reached for his hand first.
He let her take it.
"You don't have to do this tonight," she said softly.
"Yes," Anakin replied. "I do."
She searched the mask, though she could not see his face. It didn't matter. She knew the pauses in his breathing now. The way he held still when emotion threatened to move through him too quickly. The way his gloved thumb brushed once against the side of her hand when he wanted comfort and didn't know how to ask for it.
"This isn't about vengeance?" she asked.
He was quiet for a long moment.
Then: "No."
She believed that.
But she also believed his anger was walking beside him like a second shadow.
"Will you take the droids?"
Anakin glanced toward the ship, where K2-SO stood in the ramp's shadow like a waiting execution scaffold and HK-47 lounged nearby with deceptive casualness.
He thought about it.
Then shook his head.
"No. Not for this."
HK-47, who had very obviously been listening, lifted his head. "Disappointed statement: I object."
K2-SO's optics narrowed. "Your presence would escalate things."
HK tilted slightly. "Statement: That is precisely why I object."
Padmé almost smiled.
Anakin looked toward them. "Stay here. With Padmé."
K2-SO answered immediately. "We'll keep her safe."
HK took a beat longer.
Then, with theatrical reluctance: "Statement: Very well. But if you are killed by incompetent gangsters, I will be extremely annoyed."
Anakin snorted once through the mask.
He looked back to Padmé.
"I'll return before dawn."
She stepped close enough that her forehead almost touched the lower edge of his mask.
"Then I'll wait for dawn," she said.
He wanted to kiss her.
Wanted to lift the mask and forget, for one impossible second, where they were and what this planet had taken from him.
Instead, he squeezed her hand once, climbed onto the speeder, and was gone.
///
The trip to Jabba's palace felt longer than it was.
The desert stretched black and silver under the rising moons. Dunes rolled like sleeping beasts. Jagged rock formations cut across the horizon, their shadows deep enough to swallow entire caravans. Anakin rode hard, the speeder whining beneath him as he skimmed over ridges and dry gulches, cloak whipping behind him.
He had made this journey before.
As a child, it had been the road to somewhere dangerous and bigger than he understood. A place of criminals and music and the smell of meat cooking over fire. A place where bounty hunters laughed too loudly and watched too carefully. A place where Jango sometimes stood near the back wall, speaking to men with prices on their heads and death in their pockets.
Tonight the road felt different.
Not larger.
Smaller.
As if he had outgrown the fear it was supposed to inspire.
The palace rose from the desert exactly as he remembered—carved into stone, half fortress, half tomb. Torches flickered near the entrance. Skiffs and speeders crowded the landing approaches. Gamorrean guards loomed by the gate, axes resting against their shoulders, green flesh glistening in the low light.
Anakin killed the speeder and dismounted in one smooth motion.
The guards took one look at him and shifted uneasily.
The mask did that.
The height helped.
The way the Force gathered around him in silence did the rest.
One of the Gamorreans grunted and moved to block the door.
Anakin stepped forward anyway.
The guard planted the axe haft in the sand and snarled.
Anakin didn't stop.
He didn't speak.
He simply looked at the creature.
For one stretched-out heartbeat, the Gamorrean held its ground.
Then something in Anakin's presence—something cold, immense, and immovable—made it take a single involuntary step back.
The second guard glanced at the first, decided whatever this was wasn't worth getting gutted over, and slapped the control to open the door.
The palace breathed heat and noise.
The smell hit first: smoke, sweat, old stone, spice, liquor, cooked meat, stale blood. Music drifted through the halls, thick with percussion and reed-pipes, warped by distance into something almost hypnotic. Laughter followed it—drunken, sharp-edged, predatory.
Anakin walked through the main corridor like he belonged there.
People noticed.
A Rodian paused mid-conversation. Two Nikto drifted instinctively out of his path. A Twi'lek dancer froze for half a second on a balcony before remembering to keep moving. Somewhere deeper inside, somebody muttered a curse in Huttese and another voice answered with nervous recognition.
The palace remembered masks.
Maybe not this one by name.
But it remembered the feeling of old stories returning.
By the time he entered the throne room, conversation had already thinned.
Jabba the Hutt lounged on his dais under a wash of smoky lamplight, vast and glistening, the whole palace was merely an extension of his appetite. Around him clustered the usual menagerie—dancers, guards, smugglers, thugs, sycophants.
And fear.
Fear was everywhere here.
Anakin felt it brushing against his senses like insects crawling over skin. Not the immediate terror of battle. The slower kind. Habitual. The kind built into a place until everyone inside it learned to breathe around it.
Jabba's eyes narrowed as Anakin approached.
Then widened.
Recognition came slowly, but it came.
The Hutt gave a deep, rolling laugh that echoed off the walls.
"Well," Jabba rumbled in Huttese, "if it isn't the little desert phantom all grown up."
A few nearby thugs glanced between them in confusion.
Anakin stopped at the foot of the dais.
"Jabba," he said.
No title. No flattery.
Jabba's mouth stretched into what might, on a better creature, have been fondness.
"You come into my palace and stand there like you own the air." He laughed again. "You always were entertaining, Skywalker. Just like Jango."
Anakin did not return the humor.
"You summoned Black Krrsantan."
The room shifted.
Just slightly.
A blink too long from one of the guards. A dancer's shoulders tightening. A Weequay near the back suddenly pretending to be extremely interested in his drink.
Jabba noticed the shift too.
His eyes slitted.
"Did I?" he said.
Anakin took one step closer.
The palace seemed to tilt with the movement.
""He was guarding someone very important to me," Anakin said. "A source tells me he was called away." Anakin paused for a moment. "By you, Jabba," He finished.
"That person is dead now because of this Jabba, and it all points to you."
There was no accusation in his voice.
He said it like it was common law.
That made it worse.
Jabba studied him.
Anakin reached—not with his hands, but with the Force.
He let it slide out in careful, invisible threads, touching the emotions in the room. Greed. Hunger. Lust. Boredom. Fear. Irritation.
And underneath Jabba, something heavy and unpleasant but unmistakably real:
Confusion.
Irritation.
Guilt—but not that guilt.
Not for Krrsantan.
For being accused of something he did not order.
Jabba shifted his bulk, offended now.
"If I wanted the Wookiee taken," he said, "I would say so."
Anakin kept listening.
The Force did not catch a lie.
That was useful.
Jabba's tail twitched.
"Krrsantan is valuable," the Hutt continued. "Loyal. Strong. A good earner. Why would I throw away a useful beast?"
Around the dais, a few goons chuckled nervously at the word beast.
Anakin's attention moved past Jabba.
He let the current of fear in the room sort itself by flavor. Most of it was old. Background. Business-as-usual fear.
But one taste stood out.
Sharp.
Immediate.
Sweat-cold.
The fear of a creature trying very hard not to be noticed.
Anakin turned his head.
Across the chamber, half-hidden behind a pillar near one of the side entrances, stood a Trandoshan with mottled scales and a badly disguised attempt at indifference. He was armed lightly for someone in Jabba's service, his claws flexing once against the stock of a blaster he had not yet dared to draw.
Fear rolled off him in waves.
And under it—
Guilt.
Real guilt.
Anakin started toward him.
The room reacted before the Trandoshan did. A few of Jabba's guards shifted, unsure whether to intervene. Jabba lifted one thick hand lazily and they stopped.
The Trandoshan tried to back away.
Anakin was already there.
He seized the creature by the throat with one gloved hand and slammed him against the stone pillar hard enough to crack the mortar.
The room fell silent.
The Trandoshan gagged, claws scrabbling at Anakin's wrist.
"You know something," Anakin said.
The words were soft.
Behind the mask, his voice sounded almost inhuman.
The Trandoshan hissed, trying to force bravado into his expression. "You got no right—"
Anakin lifted him higher, feet dangling.
"Wrong answer."
The Force pressed in around them.
The lamps dimmed.
Loose cups on nearby tables rattled.
Anakin brought his face close to the Trandoshan's, black eye-slits staring into the reptile's panic.
"You lied to Krrsantan," he said. "You got him out of the way. And now my mother is dead."
The Trandoshan thrashed harder. "I didn't touch your mother!"
"I didn't say you did."
That landed.
The creature's pupils shrank.
Anakin felt the truth flinch inside him.
He raised his free hand and set two fingers against the Trandoshan's temple.
"No," the Trandoshan gasped. "No, no—"
Anakin closed his eyes.
The Force went in like a blade.
Memory ripped open.
Anakin's fingers pressed harder against the Trandoshan's temple.
The creature thrashed once, claws scraping uselessly against Anakin's wrist, and then the Force drove inward—not as a blunt strike, but as a cold, merciless hand peeling back thought and fear until memory bled through.
At first it came in flashes.
A patch of desert light.
Black Krrsantan standing outside the Lars homestead, massive and immovable, bowcaster slung over one shoulder, yellow eyes narrowed as two Trandoshans approached with false urgency.
They spoke quickly, nervously, claiming Jabba wanted him at once, something about an important payment owed.
Krrsantan did not believe them.
Anakin felt the Wookiee's suspicion like a growl in the blood. He saw Krrsantan step closer, looming over them, snarling in Shyriiwook, asking why Jabba would send them of all creatures. Mortal enemies speaking with rehearsed obedience, fear hidden under lies.
The Trandoshans kept talking.
One swore by Jabba's name.
Another showed a token, stolen or forged.
Krrsantan hesitated.
Only for a moment.
Then the memory lurched—
A stun blast.
Bright blue-white light cracking across fur and muscle.
Krrsantan roaring, half-turning, another bolt hitting him in the side, then another. Too many. Too fast. The mighty Wookiee collapsing to one knee, then to the sand, teeth bared even as his body failed him.
The Trandoshans swarmed him.
Chains.
Curses.
A stunned, helpless giant dragged through dust by creatures that hated him.
Then stars.
A cargo hold.
Metal walls rattling with hyperspace vibration.
The smell of fear and old blood.
And then Trandosha—
humid, choking heat, iron pens, barred cells sunk beneath stone, a place built to cage and break prey.
Krrsantan thrown into a chained holding cell, wrists locked in durasteel, collar fastened, still spitting rage through split lips while Trandoshans laughed outside the bars.
One of them holding a datapad.
A transfer order.
A payment authorization.
A name attached to the money trail.
Newt Gunray.
The memory snapped away.
The Trandoshan gasped like a drowning thing. Anakin let his hand fall, but did not release his grip on the creature's throat.
The throne room remained deathly quiet.
Jabba's great eyes narrowed as Anakin turned toward him.
"It wasn't you," Anakin said.
Jabba's tail gave a slow, irritated twitch. "I know that."
Anakin's voice stayed low and even.
"Newt Gunray paid them. They took Krrsantan off-world. He's alive, a prisoner on Trandosha.
Now the room truly shifted.
Jabba straightened as much as his bulk allowed, heavy face tightening with something uglier than anger—offense. A loyal bounty hunter stolen out from under him. His name used as cover.
The Hutt looked at the Trandoshan with pure contempt.
The creature was trembling openly now.
Anakin turned back to him, and this time he didn't need to tear into his mind. He simply lifted his chin slightly, the mask staring down at the reptile like judgment made flesh.
"Tell him," Anakin said.
The Trandoshan tried to resist. Pad his fear over the truth. Cling to whatever scraps of life remained.
Anakin's hand tightened.
The Force curled around the creature's thoughts, not ripping now, but pressing—subtle, irresistible, absolute.
"Tell him the truth."
The Trandoshan's eyes glazed for a heartbeat.
Then the words spilled out.
"Gunray paid us," he rasped. "Told us to get the Wookiee away from the farm. Told us Jabba's name would get him to move. We stunned him, took him off-world. Sent him to Trandosha in chains."
Jabba's lip curled.
"Useless carrion," he rumbled.
The Trandoshan swallowed hard, looking desperately between the Hutt and the masked warrior still holding him pinned.
Jabba waved one thick hand in lazy disgust.
"Get rid of him."
Two guards moved at once.
They never reached him.
Anakin's hand opened.
The Trandoshan rose off his feet as if snatched upward by an invisible noose. His claws flew to his throat, kicking wildly, choking on panic. Anakin did not move. He simply held him there, arm extended slightly, while the Force closed tighter and tighter around the creature's windpipe.
The Trandoshan's eyes bulged.
His struggles weakened.
Then stopped.
His body dropped to the floor with a hard, final thud.
No one in the room spoke.
Anakin looked down at the corpse for one long moment, then turned back toward the dais.
He inclined his head—barely.
"My apology," he said. "I placed blame where it didn't belong."
Jabba watched him in silence, the heavy folds of his face unreadable.
Then the Hutt gave a low grunt.
"Find the Wookiee," he said. "He earned too much to rot in some Trandoshan pit."
Anakin nodded once.
He turned and walked from the throne room without waiting for dismissal.
No one stopped him.
The guards moved aside. The dancers kept their eyes lowered. Even the hangers-on nearest the corridor shrank back from his passing, as though the dark still clung to him in the air he left behind.
Then he was gone.
Out through the palace halls, back into the desert night, leaving behind only a dead Trandoshan and the uneasy feeling that something ancient had just walked through Jabba's court like it had every right to be there.