RORY SKYWALKER'S FATHER CANNOT LOVE, even though he believes he can. He is a good man. Sort of. He is a good man because he is her father, and that's enough. She thinks so, anyways.
A quiet echo of humiliation seems to follow him even in the silencing sands of the ever-shifting desert. Dragged like a prison ball chained to his ankle. Sometimes he thinks his daughter might be the prison ball. Once, he was a poor, thin boy with bad luck. Then he was a demon of frustrated dreams. Now his appetite outgrows his body. He eats himself out of his own grave, gorging himself on the innocents, chewing down his own daughter to the bone.
He is drunk when he staggers into Shmi Skywalker's house. Angry. Wrinkled from work. He slams the door so hard the whole house shudders.
Nine year old Anakin doesn't so much as glance up from his workbench. Rory's father, Bishop Eros, has the kind of anger all drunkard father's on Tattooine have. Loud and violent. The kind that grabs your arm and doesn't let go.
He is glad Rory is in the other room, sleeping. Her mouth is stained purple from berries he saved up to buy her. Last he saw, the five year old was dreaming about sour candies and sucking on her thumb.
It's good she's not here. Rory's only five; she doesn't understand her dad is mean.
Bishop leers over him. "Not gonna say anything, boy?"
Anakin keeps his gaze locked on the circuit board. "You're not supposed to be here."
"I came for my daughter."
Hardly grown and Anakin knows what it's like to feel angry, the way it melts into your skin like smoke and becomes a second skin of armor. His faith faded into the hell-colored skies a long time ago. He knows love is not careful or soft. It's gritty, dirty, possessive. Love is angry, like a fist, like a knife.
"My sister's not here," Anakin says coolly. "My mother took her into Mos Espa today."
"She ain't your sister." Bishop's jaw clenches something fierce. "And I ain't your father."
Thank the Force, thinks Anakin.
"She ain't your sister!" Bishop raises his voice and it cracks through the blistering air like a whip. "You hear me? Y'all might've come from the same womb, but it's my blood that matters most. She ain't your goddamn sister!"
"Well, she isn't here," the boy says stubbornly.
Bishop belches. "You wouldn't tell me she was here even if she was, would ya?"
"No." Anakin finally slants his eyes to the drunkard's. A sliver of his childlike, biblical rage bleeds through his words. "Last time you were here, you cut open her face in three different places."
Shadows feast on his heart. That old, dark, flickering rage rears its head inside of him again. An insatiable desire to crush the galaxy between his hands, to let it bleed through his fingers, the way he watched his little sister bleed, to purge, to sacrifice, to destroy.
Bishop had taken a knife and carved up her face. Anakin will never forget her screams.
(They echo in his ears now. Rattling. Roaring. A firestorm. Everything is hazy red. He's burning, burning, burning. He didn't do enough. He couldn't save her.)
Bishop wipes the his mouth with the back of a ragged sleeve. "She was cryin' too loud. She's mine. I decide how I punish her."
You can't own people, Anakin wants to scream. But of course you can. Some people are just born into tragedy, a lifetime of belonging to everyone but yourself will teach you that. The Skywalker's are bound by invisible chains. Anakin and Rory were slaves before they'd even taken their first breaths.
Anakin's fists coils around a wrench. Tightly wound. He gets mean when he's nervous. He'd been building this droid ━━ a BD-1 unit ━━ for Rory, but it can wait.
"You aren't supposed to be here," Anakin repeats lowly.
"I got that part." Bishop's mouth curls nastily, revealing blackened teeth. "I'll be back for her tomorrow, boy. The day after that, too. And the day after that. On and on until I get my property back."
Itching for a fight, Anakin's fists clench further. He wonders what it would be like to beat Bishop Eros until he's a bloody smear of a person.
Until he's a slave, too. A slave to pain.
"I'll be back, boy," he repeats with a sick smile. "I'll be back."
He might come back the next day. He might not. Anakin and Rory never find out ━━ the Jedi come for them first.
⋆⁺₊⋆ ☀︎ ⋆⁺₊⋆
more abt rory's dad at a later time, j wanted to clarify this bit first - i don't rly think anakin has a dad??? like it's literally the force??
so obviously rory has a dad. technically her and anakin are only half siblings. again, more on that later :)))
i debated adding this prologue or not, but i think i want to because it shows 2 major themes for this book: how absolutely fucking evil rory's dad is, and how much anakin loves her.
also!!! here are the scars she has from her dad cutting up her face:
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