Chapter Text
Anakin was on fire. He wasn’t sure if it was the new power surging in his body since he’d accepted Sheev... the Chancellor... Sidious his Master’s help, one of his vague sensory premonitions, or if it was just the adrenaline of marching on his former home with a squad of soldiers at his back. Either way, faint licks of fire that weren’t there crawled along his skin, discomfiting him even more. He let his rage at the sensation build, using it to power through each step as the pain mounted. Every step felt harder than the one before, like moving through quicksand.
Some part of him remembered Ahsoka gleefully recounting what she’d learned about quicksand, how the best thing to do if you got caught in it was to stay still, and look for something to hold onto. That struggling against it would suck you deeper.
He ignored that part of himself. It did not give him the power his anger did.
“Master Skywalker, what do we do?” a youngling asked.
Anakin raised his saber in answer, and a reverberation in the Force struck him squarely in the chest, tossing him back into a cluster of Clones.
When he stood, however, there were no Clones.
There were an awful lot of Jedi looking very judgmentally at him for breaking the peace of the Room of a Thousand Fountains.
The Room of a Thousand Fountains? That didn’t make sense. He’d been by the classrooms for Initiates, halfway across the Temple.
The Force laughed at him, a Light ripple that chased along his flesh like chill bumps. He looked around him, first with his eyes and then the Force. He was nearly blinded in both, as a bright sun ray struck his face as the Light side flowed into him with a rush like entering hyperspace.
“I say, are you quite alright?” someone asked, and Anakin turned and shrieked.
Qui-Gon Jinn made an affronted expression and withdrew the hand he’d offered.
“But… the war?” Anakin said brokenly. “And the Sith, and… my wife! Oh, no, our kids …. Osik, this is… I’m-”
He cut off in a gasp, fighting to draw air into his lungs, feeling vaguely burnt at the edges. Qui-Gon hummed thoughtfully, and waved at a different Jedi, clearly about to hand Anakin off to some other Jedi. The way he’d passed him off to Obi-Wan, once upon a time. The trailing ends of their initial bond fluttered unhappily.
So many times, Obi-Wan had advised Anakin to let those ragged ends go, had said unhealed bonds could only cause pain, but Anakin hadn’t wanted to forget his Finder. Although from the way all his torn bonds - to Obi-Wan, to Ahsoka, to Padme and the Chancellor and even ones he didn’t realize he had - itched now, maybe Obi-Wan had a point there. Of course he did, Anakin thought bitterly. Obi-Wan was the oh so perfect Jedi Master.
But Anakin wasn’t the Perfect Jedi. He was, however, in the past. He had a chance to change things now, to make them better.
Where did it start to go wrong?
“Can you tell me what year it is?” someone asked, probably the Jedi Qui-Gon had called over.
It went wrong when he was born, it seemed. When his mother suffered under slavery.
“I’ve got to free her!” Anakin yelped. His mother was alive here, and he could still save her!
“Your wife?”
“No, don’t be an idiot, she….” Oh. She was probably a baby, if she were born yet at all. Qui-Gon certainly seemed to have far less gray in his hair than when Anakin had known him. “Oh. I’ll never -” Anakin cut off a sob. Even if he found Padme again, she wouldn’t be his Padme, his beloved wife. “I’ve lost everything.”
“I’m sure it’s not as dire as that,” Qui-Gon chided. “You have the Force, don’t you?”
“I do,” Anakin said slowly, feeling the currents of it surrounding him, connecting him to the galaxy. “And I can-” Could save his mother, no, that was thinking too small. He could free all the slaves, could kill the Hutts, could finally do what he’d always known needed doing, if only the stupid Jedi would let him.
“Ahh...” the other Jedi said hesitantly.
“Gotta go, explain later,” Anakin shouted, popping to his feet and dashing for the hangar.
***
Stealing a ship was easier than expected, honestly. The Jedi had updated all their security a few times when Anakin was young, and during the war several times a year, but in this era, nobody had yet encountered Anakin’s tendency to joyride. He was also a better slicer now than he had been at nine, so getting a ship logged out to one Knight Skywalker (despite such a person not existing in the official register yet) was fast and clean, letting him essentially just walk onto it and take off.
He set a course for Tatooine, missing R2 something fierce as he had to do the astronav calculations on his own. Especially since the ship’s onboard computer said it was 956 and he’d never actually done calculations for that long ago. He was essentially working backwards for the rotation of the galaxy, and it sucked. Still, he dodged the Coruscant Airspace Control speeders, got the course laid in, and jumped to hyperspace as soon as the Force felt he was clear.
He spent the short trip trying desperately to tack down the torn edges of his various bonds. He couldn’t let the aches in his connection to the Force keep him from doing what must be done. The meditation seemed to come easier than it had before, the Force responding to him like it hadn’t since he was young. Still, his mind didn’t like sitting in stillness, so once the needed repair was done, he moved on to planning.
956… he wasn’t sure if he’d been born then. He knew his recorded birth date was two years later, but he wasn’t entirely sure when he was actually born. Slaves lied about their children’s ages to keep them with their mothers longer.
He did know his mother was still with Gardulla, so that was a start. He could kill one Hutt, and finally fulfill the promise he’d made so long ago - or would have made in eleven years. Either way, he would free his mother, and end Gardulla’s reign.
Landing on Tatooine felt… clean. Simple. He had the Force wrapped around him like one of Obi-Wan’s cloaks, large and warm and safe. He had a path before him, and nothing would stop him. People scattered out of his way as he paced up to the Palace, a fearful quiet breaking over the crowd. Gardulla, obviously, had things to say about her Court being interrupted by a stranger, but Anakin did not care about that.
“You keep slaves,” he said simply.
“Of course Most Honored Gardulla has the best slaves!” a fussy protocol droid snapped. Anakin eyed them. He thought perhaps that was the droid he’d stripped a few language chips from after they’d been junked, to put in C3-PO. Not the AI, though, that he’d programmed fresh.
“You will free them,” he ordered Gardulla.
She let out a large chuffing laugh. He stepped forwards, and when her guards moved to stop him, he enhanced his strength with the Force to toss them across the room into the crowd behind him.
“You will free your slaves,” he repeated.
Gardulla screeched in rage. Anakin leaned in close, pressing his unlit saber up under what passed for a chin on a Hutt.
“You will let your slaves go free.”
“You will die slowly in a sarlacc,” Gardulla spat in the particularly grating tones of Nar Shadda Huttese, more nasal than the Tatooinian dialect and not as guttural as Jabba’s own carefully cultured Nal Hutta accent.
Anakin lit his saber.
Hutts were tough, hard to kill by most means. Three feet of burning plasma suddenly bursting into existence through their heads… killed most things. Although to be safe, Anakin dragged the saber downwards, zig-zagging through every point he could vaguely recall containing an organ. Interspecies Anatomy had been an... interesting class.
When he deactivated his saber and stepped away, there was a large dark crater in Gardulla’s body. He looked at the protocol droid.
“You will deactivate the slave chips.”
“I… I… I cannot,” the droid said in a horrified stammer.
“You will deactivate the transmitter chips,” Anakin repeated, stepping closer to the droid.
“I cannot… without my Master’s permission,”
Anakin tilted his head, located the restraining bolt, tucked up inside the droid’s chassis. He clenched a fist and crushed the bolt.
“You will deactivate the chips.”
“... at once, my Lord.”
“Where is Shmi Skywalker?” he demanded. Someone raised a shaking hand and pointed him towards the kitchens. He vaguely remembered the way, even after two decades, and he left to find his mother.