Saga - PT Together Again (Shmi/Cliegg Oneshot for Non-Competitive Happy Endings OTP Challenge)

Title: Together Again

Author: devilinthedetails

Characters: Shmi Skywalker; Cliegg Lars; Anakin Skywalker; Owen Lars; Beru Whitesun

Genre: Romance; AU; Drama; Family.

Timeline: Saga-PT; an AU of AOTC.

Summary: Shmi survives her time as a captive of the Tusken Raiders, and she and Cliegg are together again.

Author's Note: Written for the OTP non-competitive Happy Endings Challenge. The couple I chose to give a happy ending to was Shmi and Cliegg.

Together Again

Shmi lay on the sleep couch she had shared with Cliegg for years. Beru bathed her forehead—caked with blood and sweat—with precious water from a bowl while Owen stood behind Beru with the straight spine of a soldier on patrol duty. Cliegg sat on one side of her, squeezing one hand between his, and Anakin clung to her other hand as if he never wanted to let her go.

He had never wanted to let her go, Shmi remembered. His hand, once so small and now grown so big and strong, had always wanted to hang onto her. He hadn’t listened, she thought, when she had told him that he couldn’t stop change any more than he could prevent the twin suns from setting because even Tatooine’s blazing suns must set. Yet had she really wanted him to listen to her? Hadn’t her only hope, her only reason for hanging onto life like a withered plant in the desert been that she wanted to see her Anakin one last time and she had known in her soul that he would find a way to come to her across space?

She didn’t know. Her mind was a blank, buzzing haze. She was floating outside of time and outside of herself as she had learned to do in the Tusken camp. It was when she was a captive to the Tuskens, at the mercy of their every cruel whim, that she had mastered the art of disassociating from herself so that any pain, any abuse, any torture, inflicted upon her did not seem to hurt. Hovering outside of herself like a ghost, she could feel no pain.

Her son could feel too much pain, she thought now, seeing the deep lines of fear still etched like craters into his forehead.

To try to comfort him, she gave him her strongest smile and worried it was too frail to be reassuring. “I’m fine, Annie. You saved me against all odds.”

“The Force was with me.” Anakin’s mouth was firm, his tone unshakeable rock. He sounded like a true Jedi now, Shmi observed with pride. He was every bit the Jedi she and Qui-Gon had believed he could be. “And with you.”

Shmi had never thought of the Force as being with her, but perhaps it was. Perhaps it had been in her when she impossibly conceived Anakin, her greatest joy and comfort during so many years as a slave and now her salvation from the Tusken Raiders. Maybe it had been inside her, animating her and shaping her destiny in ways she couldn’t see as clay might not notice the sculptor molding it into a statue. Maybe it had always been inside all beings in ways she couldn’t see or otherwise sense.

Before Shmi could order her scattered thoughts into words, Threepio appeared in the domed doorway.

“So sorry to interrupt.” It was as if hesitance radiated from Threepio’s visual processors and chromed plating. “Artoo has informed me that an Obi-Wan Kenobi has an urgent message for you, Master Anakin. Do you know an Obi-Wan Kenobi?”

“Yes.” Anakin’s face became tighter, and he gave Shmi’s fingers a final squeeze before rising. “He’s my Master.”

Shmi did not know who this Obi-Wan Kenobi was and why he would be Anakin’s Master. She had assumed that Qui-Gon, the Jedi who had found Anakin and taken him away from Tatooine, would be his Master and mentor. That had been what had made the most sense to her, but what did she, a humble slave woman from Tatooine, know about being a Jedi?

“I can’t believe we’re together again.” Cliegg lifted her palm to his sun-roughened cheek and then to his blistered lips, kissing her calloused skin. “I never dared to imagine we’d be together again. Being together again is more than I ever could have hoped for, my love.”

“I missed you.” With Cliegg’s lips on her hand, Shmi would be content to lie like this for a hundred years. A hundred years with Cliegg on their farm—on the home they had built for themselves together out of Tatooine’s harsh, arid landscape—would be more bliss than she could ever have expected to have experienced when she was a slave to Watto. It stunned her that a life that had seemed over in the Tusken camp could now contain so much joy and hope. Just being in Cliegg’s presence again restored and reanimated her, stirring something deep and wonderful inside her, making her spirit sing all out of tune and yet in harmony with him and the universe. “Every second that I was away from you, I missed you and feared I’d never see you again.”

“The Tusken Raiders kidnapped you because they saw you were a woman alone and weren’t scared of you.” Cliegg’s tone was gruff and grim as he resumed the argument that had long waged between them about her habit, which he deemed so dangerous as to border on foolhardy, of picking mushrooms on her own from the vaporators on the cool mornings before Tatooine’s suns had woken to their full flesh-burning strength.

“The Tusken Raiders kidnapped me because they’re vicious beings who will hurt anyone,” Shmi retorted with all the fire she could fan from her exhausted being.

“They’re opportunists,” Cliegg insisted, shaking his head at what he no doubt deemed to be her obstinate obtuseness. “Don’t give them any more opportunities to attack you when you’re alone picking mushrooms in the morning.”

“I’m not going to stop picking mushrooms.” Shmi wasn’t going to let fear of the Tusken Raiders and the death and torture they could bring on their bantha-riding backs stop her from living. She might as well already be dead and buried six feet under sand if she did that. “Mushrooms are part of too many of my best bakes.”

And she loved the cool mornings she spent gathering mushrooms off the vaporators into wicker baskets. She delighted in the mist that rose from the vaporators and in the rich reds of the rising suns as they crawled up the horizon. Yet she couldn’t explain that to Cliegg. It was too ephemeral, too impractical, for him to understand. Her husband loved his practicalities almost as much as he loved her. Almost as much, but not quite as much, she noted with an inner smile.

The latest proof of this final idea came when he patted her hand and smiled. “Don’t go out alone to pick mushrooms, I said. Wake me up, I’ll grab my blaster, and I’ll come with you. We’ll pick mushrooms together, and I’ll protect you.”

With Cliegg confined to a hover chair—he must have been injured when the posse he had gathered to try to rescue her had been defeated—Shmi wasn’t certain how much protection he could offer her, but the notion that he would wish to lend her his strength, his protection, and his company on her early morning mushroom gathering made her heart dance as she beamed from ear to ear, the gesture cracking her lips but she didn’t care.

“It’d be a pleasure to pick mushrooms with you in the morning,” she murmured and had never meant any words more.

“We’re together again.” Cliegg swallowed her in another kiss, and Shmi could taste how he was rejoicing that he hadn’t lost her as he had his first wife. He had known so much sorrow in his life before he had found Shmi, and now he, like her, was surprised by this ambush of joy. “I want to savor every moment I have with you from now on.”

Their kiss only broke when Anakin burst into the room like a wild dewback.

“I have to leave, Mom.” Anakin raced up to her and wrapped her in a tight embrace. “Master Obi-Wan needs me to rescue him. He’s been captured on Geonosis. You’ve never met him, but he’s like a father to me, and I have to save him.”

His words were tumbling from him in a rush just as they had when he was a boy. In her eyes, he was both an overgrown boy and a hero.

Shmi opened her mouth to tell him that if this Obi-Wan was like a father to him, of course he had to leave and try to save him as he had her, but before she could, Owen spoke seriously, “You should stay with us on the farm, Anakin. Now that you’ve found your family, you shouldn’t leave again.”

Owen, once a spirit free as the restless desert wind, had settled down into this steady, reliable farmer who couldn’t fathom leaving his homestead and severely judged those who dared to venture from their families and their homes—the places where it was written in stone that they belonged.

“I’m a Jedi.” The heartbreak was plain on Anakin’s face as he pulled away from Shmi’s embrace and hastened toward the door as if he might not have the courage to leave if he didn’t hurry off on his next pulse-pounding, adrenaline-raising adventure. “Jedi have no homes or families.”

He sounded resigned to his fate of being a Jedi, not glad to be a Jedi, and Shmi wondered as she watched him disappear if she had set him down the wrong path—not toward happiness, but toward misery—so many years ago when she had urged him to leave with Qui-Gon to train as a Jedi.

“I love you,” she called after him because she didn’t know what else to say. What else could a mother say to her long lost son who would be lost to her again?

“I love you too, Mom.” Anakin’s voice was breaking like his heart. She could hear that when he called back to her.

He didn’t promise that he would come back to see her again, because it might be a lie, and he had never lied to her. Her Anakin was always truthful even when the truth didn’t flatter him or got him in trouble. He was open and honest as a flower in the sun.

“He can’t stay on the farm with us.” Shmi turned her gaze on her husband, pleading with him to comprehend this even if Owen couldn’t. “Nothing can hold him down, Cliegg. Ever since he was a little boy, not even gravity could hold him down.”

“I see that.” Cliegg did understand. Shmi could read that on his face and felt relief well inside her like an aquifer beneath desert sand and stone. “He’s a remarkable young man, Shmi, and it’s a testament to you that you were able to raise him alone for so many years. I’m glad to have met him once.”

“I’m lucky in my sons.” Shmi reached out to Owen, determined that he at least shouldn’t feel abandoned by her, and saw his hard face soften. “Both the one who leaves me to serve the galaxy as a Jedi and the one who stays with me through everything.”

This was her happy ending, Shmi thought, sagging against her pillows as sudden tiredness seeped into her bones, stripping her muscles of their ability to hold her in a sitting posture. This was her reunion with her family. This was her chance to enjoy more time in love with Cliegg. This was her opportunity to watch Owen continue to fall ever more in love with Beru with every passing day and night. This was the promise that one day she would hear Owen and Beru exchange the vows that would make them man and wife, the same oath that she had once made to Cliegg and that she renewed every moment she spent in his presence. This was what it meant to be back home—to be together again.

 

@WarmNyota_SweetAyesha As always, thank you so much for your sweet comment It was really a pleasure to be able to write this happy ending for Shmi and Cliegg and to explore all the happy family and couple feelings rather than to have to focus on tragedy and angst. And I'm so glad that you embraced this story as an account of what is!

 

@mavjade Thank you so much for your kind comment!I'm so happy that you love this story so much, because it was awesome to try to give Shmi the happy ending with Cliegg that she deserves, because it always struck me as so sad that Shmi would find love with Cliegg and then get kidnapped and killed by the Tusken Raiders. She suffered so much that it was nice to be able to give her a happy ending here. A true treat.

And I'm so pleased that paragraph was a highlight for you because I found it really interesting to think what the Force would be like from a sort of outsider perspective of someone who is not a Jedi or a Sith.

I really wanted to show how Shmi isn't going to let the attack stop her from living her life in the future and enjoying the things that she loves, and it brought a warm feeling to my heart to have Cliegg offer to go with her rather than trying to discourage her from doing something she loved, so it makes me so glad those parts stood out to you so much.

Thank you again for your kind words! They made my day

 

@AzureAngel2 Thank you so much for commenting!It did feel rejuvenating and encouraging to be able to write a hopeful piece with a happy ending for a couple who didn't receive one in canon during this bleak, difficult time of pandemic in our own world. And in my version, no Tuskens were slaughtered, because Anakin wasn't driven to a vengeful, mad attack on them due to grief at his mother's death. Shmi surviving also keeps the Tuskens from being slaughtered and prevents Anakin from taking that step down a dark path in my interpretation of this story, so Shmi's survival has so many positive ripple effects.

@amidalachick Thank you so much for commenting and I'm so flattered that you too have embraced this story as what is!Shmi's thoughts about Anakin and whether she made the right choice to send him away with Qui-Gon to train as a Jedi did feel very powerful to me as I wrote them and rang true to me as something a mother might wonder about. But I do think it will make a big difference for Anakin to know that she is alive and well on Tatooine, married to Cliegg and no longer a slave.

It makes me so happy that you love how I write Shmi, Cliegg, and their relationship. I like to celebrate how their love for one another comes across in that quiet, content way you mentioned so it means the world to me that you think that is conveyed in my stories about them.

And you highlighted one of my favorite lines and ideas from this story: that Shmi isn't going to let fear of Tuskens or death stop her from living her life in a joyful, meaningful way. Also, Cliegg melted my heart when he volunteered to join her in her morning mushroom picking

Thank you again for your always kind comments!