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Anakin Skywalker had been brought up under the burning red light of Tatooine's dying twin suns. Raised in a wasteland formed by endless dunes of sand and infernal heat, with his ankles and wrists chained to the very core of whatever hell could be found underneath all the golden grains of sand that covered the entire surface of the planet — unable to move, unable to escape from the claws of the hutt and from Watto's tyranny.
But despite this — despite being wrapped by chains his weak arms couldn't yet break — he never, not once, called it 'home'.
It didn't matter how much his mother reassured him by telling him how 'safer' Tatooine was compared to Mandalore (although he knew that even she herself didn't fully believe in her own words. The way she spoke was as if her reassurances were for her instead of him; After all, she had married a Mandalorian with the intention of running away from that very world — for him. He was sure she hated Tatooine almost as much as he did), or how much good she attempted to make out of their miserable situation, Anakin's only wish was to see his father's shadow silhouette in the horizon once again; Walking towards their little sandstone hut to tell them war was finally over, that they all could finally go back home.
("We are safe here," His mother's words were like a recording playing on a stuck disk. "Now no war will never reach us.")
But that was impossible, and the scenario existed only in his dreams.
Mandalore was where his story began — it was his home: The only place he could think of when he heard that damned word. Home could only be described as the vanishing memory of his father's apartment at the very edges of Sundari, devastated by the civil war despite its remoteness; It's dull-gray walls, covered almost completely with their little family's framed pictures and his crayon-made drawings, army badges and honor medals Luke Skywalker's fearlessness had won him. The same medals Anakin once thought as his legacy, what the Skywalkers represented, the very thing he aspired to be: An honorable Mandalorian soldier who's greatest honor was to serve their people by fighting in whatever battle dawned upon the gray wastelands of the planet.
He clings tooth and nail to the memories of home he still has left. To every smell and every texture; To the way the fourth step of the stairs creaked every time someone stepped on it; The spot by the door where his father would hide a second set of keys for his mother, who would always forget hers on her spot at the dining table before every trip to the market; The constant noise complaints from the neighbors over him, and his favorite hiding spot in one of the cabinets beneath the sink.
