A knock on his door brought A'Sharad Hett out of his light meditation. “Come in,” he said and waved the door open with the Force.
“Master Hett,” Anakin Skywalker greeted him with a bow. He had a large gourd with him, reminiscient of what Tuskens used to carry water on Tatooine.
A'Sharad let the door slide closed and gestured for Skywalker to sit on the rug with him. “Knight Skywalker.”
Skywalker took a deep breath and handed over the gourd. “May the waters sustain you.”
The gourd was larger than anything Tatooine produced and heavy with water. A'Sharad knew water was a secondary form of currency amongst the non-Tusken population of Tatooine. The Tuskens would give each other water as tribute, or repayment for a favor. He would not be surprised if the settlers and slaves had similar traditions.
A favor, then. But him because of Tatooine, or him because Skywalker knew the shape of desert politeness and wanted someone he knew how to not offend? “What brings you here?”
Skywalker closed his eyes and drew a deep breath, mouth set. Something large. “I ... have committed a grave crime,” he haltingly said, “and before I go confess to the Council, I would like to have some suggestion of – restitution.”
From what A'Sharad knew of the Council, they would appreciate both Skywalker's self-reflection and the fact he had thought about restitution. The first would usually be enough. Skywalker thought he needed the second as well. Either his crime was graver than A'Sharad could imagine, or he was, as a former slave child, being paranoid. Perhaps both. “I will help as best I can.”
“Thank you,” Skywalker said. “I- I also wanted you to hear it from me.” He fidgeted for a moment, lacing and unlacing his fingers, as A'Sharad tried to think why that would be a concern. They had not been particularly close in his mind. Then again, Skywalker seemed to desperately yearn for friends and be bad at making them; perhaps he had idolized A'Sharad from a distance, as a Tatooinian Jedi whose imperfections were not Skywalker's to worry about.
“It began a few months befor Geonosis,” Skywalker explained. “I was having nightmares of my mother being tortured. I ignored them, as Obi-Wan – Master Kenobi said that dreams pass in time. But they didn't go away, and when I was escorting Senator Amidala on Naboo, she noticed I was troubled and asked me what was wrong. When I explained, she suggested we go to Tatooine, as the assassins targeting her wouldn't think to look for her there.”
A'Sharad nodded. It was, perhaps, motivated reasoning, but frankly, trying to hide the Senator on Naboo was something A'Sharad would've advised against. It was the first place any assassin would look after Coruscant, and the Senator was enough of a local celebrity her itinerary would be easily found on any gossip website.
“While I was away, a moisture farmer freed and married my mother.”
That did not sound like Lady Skywalker had necessarily had much choice. “Was she happy with him?” A'Sharad asked, rather than Did you kill him?
Skywalker's mouth twisted into a grimace. “I don't know. When I went to the moisture farm, he told me-” Skywalker paused, took a deep breath, and closed his eyes, distress and shame and regret pouring off him. “He told me Mom had been taken by the Tuskens a month ago,” he quietly said.
So that was why he'd come to A'Sharad's doorstep. “How many of them did you kill?” he asked, knowing there was no other possible ending.
“All of them,” Skywalker choked out, tears in his closed eyes. “I killed them all! I didn't mean to! They'd tortured my mother to death and she died in my arms when I was trying to rescue her and I just kriffing snapped and I went after the men with my lightsaber and then I came to my senses and saw they were all dead. All of them. Not just the men, but the women and children too.” He stared the wall behind A'Sharad, wound so tight he was trembling, prepared for a fight.
“I can see why you would wish to bring this to the Council,” A'Sharad temporized. An entire clan. Restitution, Skywalker had said. Something very hard to do for a clan of the dead. “Given that you mentioned snapping, they'll want to hear about efforts to improve self-control. And I am sorry about your mother.”
Skywalker deflated from his combative stance. “I- Yeah.” He nodded. “Would there be any means of restitution? To the camp's – I guess I don't really know how Tuskens organize. Allies? Relatives?”
“The largest stable organization is the clan. They grow and shrink based on fortune and marriage.”
“So there's no-one left to atone to?”
They would not want your atonement, bareface. A'Sharad resettled his hands in his lap and considered how to break the bad news. “Not only that, but there are two additional facets to the matter.”
Skywalker looked like he was waiting for his execution. He took a deep breath and nodded for A'Sharad to continue.
“Firstly, the general Tusken stand is that Tatooine belongs to the Tuskens. That settlers walk on the grounds and drink the sacred water is sacrilege. The one measurable improvement anyone could contribute to the Tusken cause would be the exile of all non-Tuskens and the end of technology on Tatooine.”
“Don't you use slugthrowers?”
“Not in the Dune Sea.” The clans in contact with the settlers probably had some justification. A'Sharad had probably heard it and promptly forgotten it.
Skywalker nodded. “And the other facet?”
“Had my mother been kidnapped and tortured by a rival clan and I alone had killed them all in revenge, I would have been lauded as a hero.” A'Sharad watched the fact sink in. “Not only is there no means of mediating intertribe conflict, from a Tusken perspective, you did not do anything wrong.”
“And the moisture farmers don't think so, either. But I did do wrong.”
A'Sharad nodded. “And as a Jedi, you must atone.”
Skywalker buried his face in his hands, one flesh, one metal. It was as if the Force itself had seen his actions and decided to subscribe to the principle of the desert: Flesh for flesh.
“I am sorry I could not give you more actionable advice.”
“I should be apologizing for making you deal with this.” Skywalker closed his fingers around the air where his padawan braid had hung, then realized what he was doing and clasped his hands tightly in his lap.
“The Council would have consulted me regardless.” A'Sharad considered his feelings for a moment, then said, “I am glad to have heard it from you.” Desert son to desert son. Unprompted, from someone who knew Tatooine's brutality to someone who had grown there as well, without the soft, gentle, civilized Core in between to reinterpret the actions.
“Is there anything I could do for the general Tusken populace? I know the moisture farmers wouldn't abide by any treaty with the Tuskens, nor would the Hutts, but is there anything? Something with the Jawas as intermediaries?”
“If there were something that easy, it would already have been done.”
Skywalker hung his head in defeat. “I guess I'll go talk to the Council,” he said after a while.
“Perhaps they will be able to see something you and I cannot,” A'Sharad suggested. He did not think it would be so, but the Council was wiser than him, and there were twelve wise minds to offer counsel. It was possible.
“Perhaps.” Skywalker sighed and rose. “Thank you, Master Hett. I expect the Council will summon you at some point.”
“I hope they can help you,” A'Sharad said.
Skywalker twisted his face into a weak approximation of a smile. “I hope so, too.” He bowed deeply and let himself out.
A'Sharad remained seated. He had never been prone to wishing he were on the Council, and in the current moment, he was actively glad that he wasn't on it.
He pulled the gourd to his hands with the Force. A gesture that had lost its meaning, considering how plentiful water was on Coruscant – the two taps and the shower all provided essentially unlimited quantities of it, and that was just A'Sharad's apartment – but still one that A'Sharad appreciated. An establishing of shared context. The basis of all negotiations.
The Council would be shocked and horrified at young Skywalker's actions. As they should. They were all Jedi, and Jedi did not kill unless absolutely necessary. Skywalker had broken the Jedi Code.
He had, however, broken no laws. The Republic did not care about what happened outside its borders, and Tatooine had no judiciary not affiliated with the Hutts, who would at best not care and at worst hand him some token sum for his handling of the “Tusken problem”. It would have been the perfect crime had his conscience not come knocking.
A'Sharad did not envy the Council. Skywalker would be rehabilitated, as that was the Jedi way, but the mandatory restitution would be a challenge. How did one make amends for something one considered a much greater crime than one's victims did? How did one atone when there was no-one for whom one's atonement would hold meaning?
He turned the gourd over in his hands again. The door was locked and the curtains drawn, so he gingerly removed his mask.
Would Skywalker have stayed his blade if he had seen the faces of his victims, some human like A'Sharad, some not? Or would it have been but noise to him, who had grown in a Hutt's palace, where everyone was disposable?
But his speculation was meaningless. What had happened had happened, and A'Sharad, too, was a son of Tatooine, too close to the bloodied sands to judge this as a Jedi. He saw Skywalker as one of his people, and thus felt inclined to compromise between Tusken and Jedi morals by ignoring the matter, rather than killing this bareface like a good Tusken would.
A'Sharad opened the gourd and sipped the water within. It was sweet-tasting and obviously not straight from a Coruscanti tap. He wondered where Skywalker had gotten it.
As he wasn't actively thirsty, he closed it again and replaced his mask. The Council would come to his door eventually. Before that, he would meditate. The Council would want a good Jedi, but need the Tusken, and A'Sharad was not sure if they could ever coexist. A'Sharad had hoped that young Skywalker, brought to Coruscant at nine to his fifteen, would have been able to shear off the brutality of their shared home and be only a Jedi.
It seemed his hopes had been naught but sand. Tatooine would forever bind them.