Ambient Dreams

[crystalcat]

Chapter 16

Anakin sat in silence on the shuttle next to Obiwan after they’d dropped Padme off at the
rotunda, his elbows on his knees, head in his hands, fingers in his hair. Obiwan wanted to break
the silence, but - oddly for Obiwan, Anakin thought - couldn’t find the right words to say.
Anakin could sense this. He could sense how his master felt, know his feelings, feel his emotions,
even the ones he’d suppressed. He wasn’t entirely sure he liked the ability. It was fine now - in
fact it had probably saved his life, he thought. Padme ... he’d known she loved him, but to feel it;
to know she actually needed him the way he needed her ... the sheer power of that overcame him.
He wanted to wrap himself in it and never let go; it soothed the parts of him that hurt inside, the
wounds he still felt; when he pressed that strength of shared love to those scars it eased the pain
he felt from them. But he couldn’t spend both their lives basking in it forever; he needed to teach
himself to survive for periods of time when he was separated from her. As he was now - the
memory was there, but the warm security he felt surrounding him like a cocoon was missing. He
took several deep breaths, trying to center himself in the Force as he’d been taught, but his
concentration was too scattered. Beside him he felt Obiwan say ...
“Anakin, are you well?”
... and realized he’d probably sounded as if he was gasping for air. He sat up, swallowed,
and looked at his old master.
“Yes, I’m fine,” he said as calmly as he could. “I was ... I was trying to center myself, but
...” He didn’t finish; he knew Obiwan would know what he meant.
Again he felt his master want to say something to him and hesitate. Anakin’s heart
lurched as the feeling nestled around him like the faintest breath of air.
Obiwan loved him.
How he had wished for this as a boy growing up. He had fallen asleep dreaming about it;
spent many of his waking hours thinking up ways to bore his way into his master’s heart, even
though he’d known it was against the code. He’d never really believed in the code anyway ... at
least, he hadn’t believed in the part which forbade love. That hadn’t been ... that wasn’t ... it was
...
That had been his own opinion. Not ...
He wondered if Obiwan would still love him when he knew. It felt so fragile to him, that
love, hiding, like a painfully shy child who wants so badly to make friends. He felt his eyes start
to fill, blinked, and looked away.
“Anakin, are you certain you’re all right?” Obiwan asked him softly. “This can wait. It’s
not that important; Master Yoda said it was for when you felt ready.”
“I am ready,” he replied, wiping his eyes with his hand and looking back up at his master.
“I ... I have to see Master Yoda,” he added. “There’s something ... it’s different; I don’t know, I
think ...”
He felt surprise and then acknowledged acceptance from the man next to him, who, again,
he felt wanted to speak and did not. But when he felt Obiwan’s hand on his shoulder, the tears
came again. With the touch, the connection was much stronger.
Obiwan had loved him for a long time.
How had he not known this? But worse than that, how was he going to live without it
after Obiwan found out what he really was? How would he stand it when he actually felt the
disappointment and revulsion in his master, and knew them for a fact; something real he couldn’t
dispute, couldn’t pretend Obiwan might not really feel? Wouldn’t it be better to not feel at all
than to bear witness to such rejection? How would he manage to function normally if he found
himself surrounded by dissent? Before Obiwan had arrived, Padme had asked him to join her in
the senate rotunda. But he couldn’t go there; not like this. What had happened to cause this
change in him? Why only now could he feel ...
NO! The revelation stunned him, taking his breath away. Not only now! He’d
always done this; always felt ... Only it had been ...
He gasped, leaning forward, shaking, struggling for air.

“Anakin!” exclaimed Obiwan. I shouldn’t have done this. I knew I shouldn’t have
brought him here so soon! His brother was bent over, his arms locked across his stomach,
gasping. Obiwan put his arm around his back and drew him close, holding onto him, feeling him
shiver. “Slow down,” he told him. “You’re hyperventilating. Breathe slower.” He rocked him
slowly back and forth in a steady rhythm to help him pace the breaths he took. “That’s right,” he
said as Anakin began to get himself back under control, “That’s good. Just. Breathe. Slowly.”
The shuttle came to a stop. Obiwan looked up and saw that they were in front of the Jedi
temple’s main entrance. He sighed.
“I really think we’d best turn around,” he said gently, silently berating himself for not
following his common sense earlier.
“No,” Anakin replied, almost before he’d finished speaking. The refusal hardly surprised
the older man; he’d had thirteen years to get used to hearing it. But when his former padawan
turned to look at him, he saw not defiance in his eyes, but a sort of despairing hope. “I need ... to
see Master Yoda,” he added.
Enlightenment began to dawn on Obiwan.
“About this?” he asked.
Anakin nodded, swallowing and taking a deep breath.
“All right,” Obiwan acquiesced. “If you’re sure you won’t pass out on me before we get
there.”
The younger man shook his head, once. “I won’t,” he whispered, then added, “It’s all
right,” as if he thought Obiwan needed reassurance.
Maybe I do, he thought, and started to get up, but felt something tug at him. He
looked down to see Anakin, arms still folded, grasping the hem of his tunic tightly, like a lifeline.
The younger man seemed to notice it at the same time, and deliberately let it go.

Anakin knew that Obiwan expected him to collapse at any moment, and considering what
his behavior must have looked like, he couldn’t blame him. The only thing he could do now,
however, was to control himself as best he could and not give his former master any more cause
for concern. The worst of the shock was over, he thought, although he refused to think about
what the implications meant for him; he had to push thinking about it away at least until he got
inside; until he saw Master Yoda. But it didn’t stop him feeling like he was walking to the
executioner’s.
It was very quiet inside the temple, although the silence was not tomblike, as he’d half
expected it to be. From far away he heard the echo of voices, mostly high-pitched ones. The
younglings must have returned, he realized. At least I did something right. But that had
been after he’d known ... Stop thinking about it.
He stared high overhead at the corbel-vaults in the ceiling of the nave. The grandeur of
the main hall never failed to impress him, though he knew now it belonged to a past age, long
gone. When he looked back down, he saw that Master Yoda was waiting for them in an alcove,
and as he approached the ancient head of the council, he felt his presence as well. And something
else.
Master Yoda knew. And he understood.
“Anakin,” he said softly in greeting, for the first time using his given name.
“Master,” he replied, bowing, wondering why he had never felt this before, not even when
he had come to Coruscant for the first time. Instead, he’d felt ...
“Discovered, you have, the extent of the darkness,” the old master observed. “Painful it is
for us all.”
“Master?” Painful for Master Yoda? The things he had done?
“Not your actions, Anakin,” he clarified. “Myself I speak of.”
“You?”
The sage nodded wearily. “Let us to a meditation chamber go,” he suggested. Anakin felt
Obiwan hesitate. Evidently Master Yoda did as well, because he added, “Join us, you should,
Obiwan. The last of the council we are.”

When they had closed the door of the dimly lit chamber behind them and had taken seats
on the hassocks, Obiwan asked, “You said we were the last of the council. Are we certain? None
of the others survived?”
Master Yoda bowed his head.
“No council members,” he said. “No ... masters. Some knights there are who survived.
Those with padawans not at the temple. And a few others who on remote outposts were
stationed.”
“How many?”
“About a hundred,” was the reply. “Maybe some more.”
It was a pitiful few, Anakin knew. Order 66 had been swiftly executed; almost over
before it was canceled. If only he’d realized what was happening sooner, he might have saved
them.
“Berate yourself not, Anakin,” Master Yoda told him. “None of us Palpatine’s treachery
saw. Thankful we are that defeat him you did. But now heal the republic and Jedi order must.
Forward we must look to prevent this from happening again.”
I should still have seen it, Anakin thought. I was the Chosen One. I knew what
he ...
“Anakin,” Yoda said. “Would you still a Jedi be? A master on the council?”
“A master?” he asked, the irony of the offer not lost on him. He’d wanted the position
before more because he’d thought it would better prepare him to do his job as the Chosen One
(and most recently because he’d thought he might find some ‘masters only’ knowledge that could
save Padme), than for the prestige. Not that he hadn’t wanted the prestige; he had, though he
couldn’t imagine why now. The offer held no interest for him whatsoever, and he said so. “I’m in
violation of the code, anyway,” he added.
Master Yoda sighed. “The code to serve the Jedi was created. The Force” - he gestured
to the space around him with his hand - “the Jedi served, with the guidelines of the code to aid
them. But the Jedi began instead to serve the code. The Force less and less heard was, and the
darkness into us crept.”
For Anakin, this came oddly as no surprise, but he couldn’t help feeling Obiwan’s
astonishment.
“Then the code is wrong?” he asked.
“Not wrong, no,” Yoda clarified. “But wrongly used. If the voice of the Force against
the rules of the code spoke, listen to it we did not.”
“In other words, you were meant to be with Padme,” Obiwan said. Anakin noted that he
was looking at Master Yoda, however, and not him, and that Master Yoda nodded.
Unfortunately, as much as he ached to - wanted with all his heart to believe it was so - he could
not agree.
“No,” he said. “In that instance, the code was right. It was because of my love for her
that I almost turned. I was too afraid of losing her.” I still am afraid, he admitted to
himself. Not that she will die immediately in childbirth, but that she will eventually die, as all
beings do. And that I will be able to do nothing, except die myself. This he was willing to do,
but he could not imagine the universe existing without Padme in it. How could she simply cease?
He fought against a renewed rush of tears.
“Letting fear control you wrong was,” Yoda observed. “But also Padme’s presence
required was. Know this I do; meditated on it I have, though much still to learn is.” The tiny
master thumped his stick on the floor. “But forward we now must go! Think you I could not sit
and my own guilt contemplate? But where that would get us, hmm? To the future we must now
look.”
Anakin looked away. Simple guilt at not knowing the Sith were among them he could
accept; as Master Yoda said, they had all shared it, and if he were honest, even though he’d been
the closest to the chancellor, they made up for that closeness with their experience. For that, they
shared equal guilt, and he thought he could go forward from that, were it the only problem. But it
was not. He bore - would always bear - the guilt for knowing he would have betrayed them all, if
not for a warning dream. Steeling himself against the revulsion and disappointment he knew they
would feel, he told them of what he would have done and why, and how he would have betrayed
them all except that what he’d wanted from the Sith did not exist.
When he finished, he stared unseeing at a line in the carpet. For a moment, no one said
anything and he dreaded the silence until he realized no judgment lay buried in it. From the
masters he felt no disgust, but instead a deep sympathy and understanding. At last, Yoda spoke.
“So certain are you that betray us you would if the Sith had this power?” he asked. “Even
knowing what of you would be required to obtain it?”
“I saw myself, Master Yoda,” he said miserably. “I must believe it.”
Master Yoda leaned forward. “The self you saw knew not what the Sith would require
until too late it was,” he said. “Tell me, if Senator Amidala about to die was and the only way to
save her annihilate the Jedi - including the younglings; including Obiwan - was, kill them, you
could?”
Anakin thought about it, visualizing the scenario in his mind. He didn’t think he could; it
seemed an impossible situation, one with no way to win, and the more he considered it, the less
likely he thought he’d be able to survive himself. His thought process would refuse to work;
either outcome was so horrible he didn’t want to imagine it. But could he really know just from
thinking about it? If he was actually in the situation, might it not be different?
Obiwan’s measured, soothing voice cut into his thoughts, trying to reassure, but his words
chilled Anakin’s heart: “Anakin, unless you were under some compulsion, you could never kill
the younglings,” he said softly. “I’ve seen you with them; you love children. It wouldn’t happen;
you couldn’t kill a child.”
Anakin’s eyes met those of his master, dread filling his soul. The root of his fear, his
agony, his guilt had been unearthed. He would have to finally tell them. And once they knew, the
love he now felt from his master would be gone when he turned away in revulsion. Tears blurred
his vision as he pressed what he felt of that love to his heart and blessed it before taking a deep
breath, and said, his voice cracking, “I already have.”

[crystalcat]

Chapter 17

Obiwan heard the words, but his mind refused to believe them. When had Anakin
killed a child - when could he have, when he, Obiwan, would not have known about it?
It’s more of his might-have-beens, he told himself. Or some mis-parried blaster bolt
gone astray. Though he didn’t really believe the last; his brother was too good of a
swordsman.
After the short confession, Anakin sat in silence, his eyes fastened on the floor, mouth
working as if he could not possibly get the rest of what he had to say out of himself. His features
twisted in internal agony, his breathing became stentorian, and he finally seemed to give up and
bury his face in his hands. It must be his might-have-beens, thought Obiwan. That’s how
he was on Mustafar, when I first got there. He was just about to offer reassurance, when
Master Yoda spoke.
“Tell us you must, Anakin,” he said gently, “Carried too long this burden you have.”
Master Yoda knew about this? With shocked amazement, Obiwan looked back at
his former padawan, who nodded to acknowledge the ancient master’s words.
“On Tatooine,” he murmured, almost too quietly to be heard. “When my mother died.”
Then! He hadn’t been with him then! And Anakin had been extraordinarily
closed-mouthed about that incident. Obiwan knew only that his mother had died - been killed by
some native tribal band. When he’d found out, he’d felt so terrible for dismissing Anakin’s
dreams that he hadn’t thought it right to formally reprimand his padawan for disobeying an order
(though he’d still reproached him privately). But how did killing a child come into it? Had he
needed to in order to reach his mother in the first place? If so, why hadn’t he ever mentioned it
before? He had to know his master would understand.
“In such terrible pain you were,” Master Yoda acknowledged softly. “Felt it, I did.”
“I killed them,” Anakin whispered, his gaze still locked on the floor. “All of them.”
All? All of whom? Obiwan was suddenly lost. This couldn’t be true. Anakin
could never kill children - he’d seen him with the younglings; it was the only time he’d ever seen
his brother exhibit any kind of patience; it was what made him think, more than anything, that he
would one day be an exemplary Jedi, as he had told him before leaving for Utapau. He looked
back at Master Yoda, hoping for some explanation, but the old master paid no attention to him;
all his concern was directed at Anakin, who went inexplicably on with his confession to an
impossible deed.
“I couldn’t stop myself,” he said. “I didn’t want to stop myself. I hated
them.” His voice grew stronger. “I still hate them!!” he spat venomously, before burying
his face in his hands, gasping. Obiwan could see him still visibly trembling.
Trembling with what? Rage? Remorse? He hadn’t sounded remorseful. He’d
sounded vindictive. Obiwan felt oddly disconnected from the scene, as if he were watching a
dramatization on the holovid; as if a stranger had suddenly inhabited his brother’s body. But no.
No. That’s how I want to feel, but I know ... He knew - had always known somewhere in
the back of his mind - that Anakin would be capable of intense fits of rage, if he ever let go. Was
that what the council had seen when he had first come? Should he have listened to their reason
instead of giving into his grief and insisting his own master’s last wish be fulfilled? No, that
wasn’t right, either. What was right, then?
“Tried to stop you, Master Jinn did,” Yoda told him. “Heard him you did not. In too
much pain you were; the dark side only could you feel.”
Qui-Gon? Obiwan recalled what he’d said about Anakin when he’d sensed his old
master’s presence on the transport ship: “It will take him some time to completely heal. He will
need you to help him through that.” And I said ‘of course,’ he thought. But how? How
can I help him with this? He is still angry, even after all this time. And I can’t even imagine it.
I don’t know what to do.
In his mind, a familiar voice whispered, You don’t have to do anything, Obiwan. Just
be there for him. That is what he needs from you. The help he must get from himself.
In front of him, at almost the same time, Anakin, who had looked up only momentarily at
the mention of Qui-Gon, surprise in his eyes, said, “I don’t deserve to be a Jedi.”
Yoda did not reply. Obiwan saw that he was lost in deep thought, his eyes seemingly
focused on the dust motes dancing in a sunbeam that lanced its way through the closed blinds.
He can’t be going to agree, he thought in dismay. Anakin still has the anger; that won’t
help any more than his ignoring it has. He didn’t want to hear the rejection he was sure was
coming; he couldn’t wait.
“Anakin,” he said gently, “What happened with your mother? You told me that she died;
that she’d been killed by the tribal people on Tatooine. But that’s all I know. Have you ever told
anyone the whole story?”
At the sound of his name, Anakin had started, but not looked up, though for a moment he
turned his head in Obiwan’s direction.
“I ... I told Padme,” he said. “And ...” - he hesitated, and Obiwan saw his face alter as he
squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his hands - “and Palpatine.” He turned away.
Palpatine! The implications of such a confession threatened to momentarily
overwhelm him. But Anakin was continuing as if he’d already realized those implications himself,
all too well ...
“I told him I didn’t think I was fit to be a Jedi; that I was still angry. I told him I was
thinking about leaving the order. He ... he talked me out of it,” he said. “But I ... I wanted to be
talked out of it. That was why I told him and not the Jedi.”
Obiwan tried to push aside the slight; the part of him that wondered why Anakin could not
have at least confided in him, if not the others. It wasn’t relevant now; he could almost hear Qui-
Gon telling him so. Now he had to focus on breaking that silence.
“Anakin,” he asked quietly, “How exactly did your mother die?”
For a moment, his former padawan sat unmoving; then a shudder ran through his body. He
swallowed. His mouth worked; once or twice he seemed to begin to speak, but stopped.
“Anakin?”
“She ...” he whispered. He seemed unable to go on.
“Can you start at the beginning?” Obiwan suggested. “When you first got to Tatooine?”
The younger man nodded, and began, haltingly, to tell them the story of how he’d
discovered his mother had been freed from slavery by a moisture farmer who married her, and that
he and Padme had tracked her to their home near the Dune Sea by Mos Eisley.
“He said ... he said the Sand People had captured her. She’d been gone a month.” He sat
rigidly still, staring straight ahead at a memory. “They’d tried to find her but too many got killed;
he’d lost his leg trying.”
“A month ...” Obiwan whispered to himself. He had the dreams for about a month
before it happened. If I’d let him go sooner ...
Anakin had apparently not heard him speak and continued on, “I went out alone and
tracked them; it took most of the night. They were encamped at the mouth of a canyon. I snuck
in; it wasn’t hard. I could tell which tent she was in; I felt ...” His face twisted up with pain; tears
formed in his eyes and spilled down his cheeks. “I cut a hole in the back with my lightsaber and
went in. She was ... she was tied to a sort of travois propped up on the center tent pole so she
couldn’t lay down. Her wrists were bleeding, and ... and her mouth. There were welts on her
face.” He stopped for a moment, closing his eyes. Obiwan could see his jaw working as he
ground his teeth together. After a bit, he went on, “I untied her and she sort of fell into my arms.
She ... she didn’t weigh hardly anything; she was all bones, but ... but she was very stiff, as if she
... as if ... as if she was hurt to badly to move. She ... she recognized me, and ... and t-touched my
face. I ...” He stopped and put his head in his hands, exhaling in a ragged sob. For a few
moments he remained that way, silently crying, and then, without looking up, continued, “I tried
to tell her it was okay; that it would be all right, that I was there to s-save her, but I don’t think
she could hear me. She was ... she said ...” He stopped again to collect himself before going on,
“When I first left her, when I was nine, she asked me if I knew if I’d ever see her again. I tried to
look in the Force and see, but it wasn’t clear. It seemed like maybe I would, but there was
something not quite right about it; I didn’t know what. So I told her, ‘I guess so.’” He stopped.
Obiwan saw him swallow. “I could tell by what she said to me that she’d only been hanging on
because of that. S-she ... she believed in me so ... so m...” He began sobbing uncontrollably and
had to stop, burying his face in his hands. At length, he regained some control of himself and
said, “And then she died. She just went limp in my arms, and I felt ... I felt ... I felt the Force take
her.” His face twisted, but he kept on, “Like there was a hole where she’d been. Gone.” He
started to shake, and suddenly pounded his fist on the hassock. “And I couldn’t stop it!” he spat.
“I couldn’t ... I couldn’t save her.” He folded his arms tightly in front of him and began rocking
back and forth.
Obiwan stared at his tortured padawan, his own heart breaking. If only he’d allowed him
to act sooner; he should have known the recurring dream was a portent. Why had he been so
insistent that it was identical to what he’d experienced? He’d been so much younger then; Anakin
had been an adult, if not a full Jedi, past his trials. If he’d paid attention, they could have gone
together. The entire tragedy could have been avoided.
Qui-Gon, he thought. You said I needed to be here for him, but what can I
possibly give? He blames me for it, for not letting him go when he could still save her; I
remember how he was when he returned. He didn’t say what happened, but I still should have
known. I should have asked.
He waited, hoping for a response, but none came. Nor had Master Yoda moved from his
position. The only sound he could hear was his padawan softly crying.

Anakin wept. His mother had been dead for three years, but the wound her death had left
was still as fresh as the night it had happened. Guilt haunted him as well as loss; guilt for the lives
of the children he’d killed that night - which he’d known even as he’d cut them down was wrong -
guilt for not being able to bend the Force to his will to save her, and guilt for not heeding his
warning dreams sooner. He sat, folded into a ball of unrelenting torture, rocking himself in the
meditation chamber, oblivious to the masters who sat helplessly beside him. But it was guilt only.
The white heat of rage he’d always felt surrounding the memory was gone. He no longer felt hate
for the Sand People, only a vague, dead sense of incomprehension mixed with loss at his mother’s
senseless death.
Although he had been physically healed, he had not come to the temple at his full strength,
and it didn’t take him long to exhaust himself with his grief. As the tenseness in his muscles and
the self-castigation in his mind lessened through sheer weariness, he became once again aware of
the presence of the two masters near him. From Master Yoda he sensed an odd understanding -
he’d been surprised to learn that Master Yoda had known something was wrong all along. But he
was fearful of opening himself to his own master, afraid of what he would find; afraid of the
rejection he was certain would come. Yet a part of him - the part wracked by the guilt of
committing an un-Jedilike act - knew he deserved such a rejection. He was no Jedi; he never had
been. He had never deserved to become one. So, steeling himself, he opened his mind to Obiwan
and to the punishment he knew would follow.
Sadness, regret, incomprehension, concern, failure, guilt. He felt all of these assail
him. But stronger than any of them, running beneath the surface emotions, he also felt love.
He still loves me, Anakin thought as a flush of warmth coursed through him and tears
welled up freshly from eyes he’d thought run dry. He still loves me.
For awhile, Anakin sat with his face held in his hands, still crying, though now he wept
tears of relief and release. Gradually, as the fear of rejection he’d been stifling for the past three
years ebbed away, he accepted the painful feelings from his master, acknowledging them as his
just due. Except for one - guilt. Why would Obiwan feel guilt for what he, Anakin, had done?
With regret, he remembered then how he had blamed his master for his mother’s death;
insisting he was accountable for holding him back when he should have gone to her immediately.
But he had never voiced that blame to Obiwan; had his master sensed it nonetheless? Slowly, he
looked up to meet the older man’s tortured eyes.
“It’s not your fault, Obiwan,” he told him, his voice barely achieving more than a half-
whisper, though it was loud enough in the quiet room. “I know I blamed you at the time. But it
wasn’t your fault.”
“I should have known the dreams you had were not normal, Anakin,” came the soft reply.
“We should have gone together from the start.”
“No,” he insisted. “I disobeyed you when I finally went to Tatooine. I could have
disobeyed you and gone any time; it was up to me. My choice. You ...” he stopped, feeling his
way now through unfamiliar territory. There was something Obiwan felt, not about him exactly,
but it contributed to the guilt. A memory of something else, long ago. His thoughts as well as his
emotions came through, so strong were they: Qui-Gon and ... Obiwan’s dreams. Dreams
pass. Told to Obiwan as a young padawan, still a child. What Obiwan had repeated to him.
Dreams pass. Dreams about his mother. Obiwan’s mother. Obiwan had been worried
about his own mother, long ago. Before Anakin had even been born.
He fought the urge to get up and comfort his master with a hug or any other sort of
physical contact; he knew from personal experience that such demonstrations only made the older
man uncomfortable. But, unable to not take action, he sent his own love for Obiwan
through the Force to him, and felt, rather than saw, it strike its target. At the same time he heard
Obiwan gasp. Wondering if he might have thrown too much at his master at once, he stopped
focusing what he felt, and simply let it radiate out into the room.
Master Yoda spoke: “Found yourself you have, hmm?” he said. “So, now. Once again, a
Jedi would you be?”
Found myself? he wondered. The self who could kill an entire tribe in revenge in a
futile attempt to salve his own pain and guilt? That self was not a Jedi, and he quietly
acknowledged it.
“Not that self, no,” the old master agreed. “A padawan that was. Not a Jedi. Merely a
learner. Learned, have you?”
Learned, yes, but at what price? The universe could not afford the cost to train
such a Jedi as he. He turned to look at Master Yoda. In the quiet brown eyes, he saw peace, the
forbearance of one who has lived long and seen much. But he also saw - or rather he felt, as the
ancient master permitted him a glimpse of a memory - an old pain from ages past when the
council head was very young. It was healed now, but the imprint remained: Fire, destruction,
a planet slowly torn asunder. And the uncontrolled rage against the injustice by one of the
planet’s small native inhabitants, strong in the Force. A garrison of the enemy outworlders, big
and clumsy, but physically powerful. More than half were conscripts, slaves to the will of their
overlords, who would gladly have laid down their arms once freed. Some of them actually had.
But in the heartbreak of his loss, he had cut them all down without regard.
Master Yoda? Anakin thought, unable to accept that the wise head of the order had
once been like him.
The price already paid has been, came the answer. If learned from it you did,
would you the lesson waste?
No, he thought. But ... Did he want to be a Jedi now? Even with his marriage
allowed, could he do it? It had taken him away from Padme so often - too often. It was true, the
war was over now, but he was also about to become a father. Could he stand to spend the time
away a Jedi must, even in peacetime? He didn’t know.
“Think on it you will,” the old master told him.

Anakin’s channeled outpouring of love struck Obiwan with surprise, making his eyes sting
and taking his breath away. Awash in the white-hot fire that burned brighter than the surface of
the sun, he felt overwhelmed, rudderless, in sheer awe of the strength of power surging around
and through him. In it he felt his friend, his padawan, his brother, but also, behind that, a sense of
something infinite that shook him. Anakin seemed to sense this unease, and dimmed his light,
backing away slightly until Obiwan could breathe again, though he didn’t let go.
Found yourself, you have, hmm? he heard both within his head and without.
For just a moment, he continued to flounder, then discovered himself, curiously twice; no,
three times - once in his own perception, again in his brother’s, and yet again, though much more
muted, in that of his childhood teacher. This triad of viewpoints, older, younger, and self,
presented for him a clear picture of the man he’d come to be: An anchor of much-needed stability
and security; a shining example of fairness and just cause, what the Jedi were held to be; and a
much-beloved combination of father, brother, and dear friend. A dedicated student grown into
the fullness of his early promise; a colleague whose progressive influence and outlook were
especially welcome in an age when the order had grown somewhat rigid in its thinking; and a
master - the only other one - that the will of the Force had spared from the purge. His own view
reminded him of his shortcomings and that he still had a long way to go. But at what cost?
he asked himself.
The price already paid has been. Would you the lesson waste?
No. Self-recrimination and guilt are unworthy of a Jedi. He could hear his own
master, Qui-Gon, saying it. They serve no useful purpose. Nor does regret. Learn from your
mistakes, Obiwan, but do not dwell on them unnecessarily.
“Think on it you will,” he heard Master Yoda’s voice say before returning to his
meditation.
With the old master’s withdrawal, Obiwan once more became overtly aware of his former
padawan’s intense Force-presence. He wasn’t sure why it surprised him; he’d known all along
that Anakin was the Chosen One and so possessed more Force-sensitivity than any living Jedi.
Possibly, he thought, because his brother’s light had been so faint when he’d found him in the
chancellor’s office, and on those two occasions when he’d had to call him back while in the
hospital. He’d known intellectually that Anakin had been near death then. Exactly how near was
now evident. A chill ran down his spine in spite of (or possibly somewhat because of?) the
outpouring of warmth and love his brother was radiating into the room. And he thought, Was
that what he felt from me that kept him alive? His eyes met Anakin’s, and in that moment, he
knew.
But he also knew, or could sense now, that while his padawan had begun the healing of his
soul, he had, in the process, pushed himself past his still-diminished physical capacity. He was
completely and totally exhausted.
“Padme is going to kill me,” he said.
“I’m fine, Obiwan,” Anakin protested, but his eyelids drooped, belying his words.
Obiwan stood up and went over to him.
“You’re not going to make it back to Padme’s apartment unless I carry you,” he observed.
“Can you make it up to your quarters here?”
“I think so,” came the reply, but he made no move to rise. After a moment, Obiwan took
him by the arm and pulled him to his feet.
“Are you sure you can make it?” he asked dubiously.
Again, his friend nodded, and arm in arm, they left the meditation chamber and crossed the
nave. But when they got to the grand staircase, Anakin stopped.
“Those stairs look comfortable,” he observed.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” Obiwan told him. “You’re going all the way up to your quarters; it’s
not that much farther.” He stopped for a moment, then added playfully, “You do know where it
is, don’t you? I forgot you probably never slept there.”
Anakin looked sideways at him.
“Yes, I did,” he protested. “Once or twice.” Then his lips twitched. They both laughed.
Obiwan nudged him forward, with a bit of assistance from the Force, and they started up the
steps.
“This reminds me of Cato Nemoidia,” the older man offered. A moment of silence passed.
“No it doesn’t,” came the quiet reply.
“No?”
“No.”
“I think it does,” Obiwan insisted. “Of course, our roles were reversed then.”
Another moment passed.
“I am not drugged,” Anakin announced in a voice of mock dignity at the same
moment that his foot slipped. They both would have gone tumbling if they hadn’t both also
reached out with the Force in tandem to steady themselves.
“Well,” the older man observed dryly, “Same effect.”
“Is it?”
“Mmm Hmm.”
“Okay.”
Obiwan waited for him to say something more. They were nearly to his room; he could
see the door just ahead. He wondered if Anakin had fallen asleep on his feet; the closer they had
gotten, the more heavily his brother leaned on him. Finally, as they reached the threshold, he
prompted quietly, “‘Okay?’”
Anakin leaned against the doorjamb, his eyes barely open, and regarded his master
thoughtfully. Finally he smiled lopsidedly and said, “It doesn’t count then.”
They both laughed again.
Obiwan started to help him over to the sleeping mat, but the younger man suddenly turned
into an immovable object.
“Obiwan?” he said.
“Yes, Anakin?” he replied, stopping himself from trying to bodily push his brother into the
room. Something in the younger man’s tone had changed; he was no longer joking around.
“If I came back, what would ...” he began, “I mean, do you know, what I ... what Master
Yoda would want me to do?”
Obiwan considered the question. There were many things that needed to be done, and he
was sure they would both be required to be active in fulfilling them. But to be honest, Master
Yoda had so far mentioned only one.
“I’m sure it isn’t the only thing,” he replied, “but I know he’d like you to train one of the
younglings as your padawan.”
He felt rather than saw the astonishment run through Anakin’s body, and realized they
were still connected to each other emotionally. But he didn’t comprehend how much the simple
request had moved his brother until he knew his eyes stung with tears and he felt the lump rise in
his throat.
Suddenly pliable again, Anakin allowed Obiwan to lead him to the sleeping mat, where he
fell immediately into a deep sleep.

[crystalcat]

Chapter 18

“The temple will be sending a representative over to tonight’s session for the deposition,”
Bail announced. He’d entered the committee room only a few moments before, where those
sympathetic to allowing the Separatists to rejoin the republic without censure were meeting. “I
just thought you’d like to be notified.” As he spoke, Padme thought his eyes seemed to linger on
her a moment longer than the others. Does he know? she wondered.
The idea that he might didn’t fill her with trepidation as it would have a week ago. In fact,
now she wanted to scream her love for Anakin to the room; to run out into the rotunda and shout
about it in front of the entire assembly. But she did not. The only concession she’d made was to
no longer attempt to hide her pregnancy.
When she’d first joined them, their stares had seemed curious and she’d been certain
someone would inquire about it. But they’d averted their eyes, too polite to ask about something
that should have been obvious long before today. Or, she admitted, too polite to ask her about
something they’d known she’d been trying to hide up until this point. And now, after working on
the legislation all afternoon, she had simply become part of the scenery, her condition forgotten,
or at least dismissed as irrelevant, in the rush to finish the painstaking wording of the bill.
Mon Mothma turned to Bail.
“How much more time have we got?” she asked.
“Not long,” he replied. “If you need a break, now is the time. I think I can safely say that
what you’re working on won’t come up until tomorrow, at the earliest.”
Mon pursed her lips; Padme knew she’d wanted it pushed through as quickly as possible
before the opposition had more time to gather strength. Around them, the committee began to
break up, and the senator from Chandrila sighed and leaned back, accepting that her headlong
rush to pass the legislation before morning was not going to happen. Padme felt Bail squeeze her
shoulder, and she looked up in time to see him wink at her just before he disappeared out into the
hallway.
So he does know! she thought, then immediately second-guessed herself with, Or
was he just winking about me no longer hiding it? Not that it really mattered, though she
found herself wishing that at least one other person here knew.
“Looks like that’s it for today, then,” she heard Mon say, and looked back at the other
woman, who, like her, was still sitting at the conference table. The others had all risen. Most had
left; the remainder were engaged in deep conversations with each other, still rehashing bits of the
bill they’d been engineering - or bits of bills engineered in the past. But Mon was still regarding
her speculatively. “Please don’t take this the wrong way,” she finally said, “And if I am in any
way out of line, just tell me. But I can’t help but think that if I myself went to a great deal of
trouble to hide something and then suddenly one day stopped hiding it, I’d probably be quite
disappointed if no one said anything about it.”
Padme’s eyes widened and she glanced involuntarily down at her huge stomach, made all
the more enormous by the dress she’d chosen: the fuzzy purple one she’d never before worn out
in public because it made her look bigger than she actually was. She laughed.
“I guess I am, sort of,” she admitted. “It’s just that it’s hard to imagine it’s so
inconsequential to everyone else, when it’s so incredibly important to me.”
Mon smiled.
“You’re still allowed to make an announcement, you know,” she said.
“I know,” replied Padme. “And I had intended to, until I realized that it might take too
much attention away from the reunification bill.”
Mon raised her eyebrows.
“I think maybe you’re still assigning it too much importance in other peoples’ minds,” she
said. “It might cause some concern on Naboo, but it’s doubtful it would anywhere else. None of
the other systems has a law anything like Naboo’s that allows only unattached people to serve in
office; they wouldn’t comprehend that a scandal might exist.”
Oh yes they would, thought Padme, wondering now if Mon might look down on her once
she knew the whole story. Anakin’s defiant words, our baby is a blessing, came back to
her, and she understood now why he hadn’t wanted to tell Obiwan. Their love for each other was
- would be - considered a moral failing, one she (and Anakin, she knew) might have accepted if it
had been only them. But she refused to think that of Luke - he was a blessing, as his father had
said, not some mistake that should never have been made. She’d have to be strong for his sake,
not live her life in shame. Out loud, she said, “It’s not ... that’s not the reason.”

Mon Mothma heard Padme’s disclaimer with surprise, and, well, she had to admit it, avid
curiosity. She’d known for a couple of months now that her fellow senator had to be pregnant,
and, in trying to trace some reasonable cause for the other woman to conceal it (or try to) had
discovered the unusual Naboo law. She’d been so certain that must be the reason that even now,
she half expected it to turn out that way, despite Padme’s demur.
“Not the main reason, anyway,” she was continuing, almost convincing Mon she’d been
right all along anyway, until she added, “Although I admit I did want to stay on Coruscant.”
Stay on Coruscant? But not necessarily in the senate. That did turn matters
around; the situation was not as she’d expected. “Because the father lives here?” she asked out
loud, though she knew what the answer had to be before she saw Padme’s nod. Why had she
assumed he was some anonymous face on Naboo? But she still could think of no likely local
candidate whose identity would create enough of a scandal to drown out Palpatine. Because,
though she wouldn’t say so to Padme’s face, being the senator from the ex-chancellor’s home
planet was probably enough of a handicap by itself, for all that she’d had no control over it. If the
opposition chose to play dirty (and she thought there was an excellent chance that it would), the
Naboo senator’s support of reunification would be labeled as a continuation of Palpatine’s
favoritism (if one could really call it that) towards the Separatist systems.
“My husband lives here,” Padme clarified. “We are married.”
So there was not even that outmoded morality issue to contend with. What then? It was
painfully obvious that despite her decision to stop trying to hide her condition, she was still
uncomfortable revealing the details of her marriage. What could she say to draw her out?
Some motion near the door, behind and to the left of Padme, drew her eye; the room had
been emptied of all except the two women for a little while now. Mon looked up to see the Jedi
Master Kenobi standing there. Of course, she thought, Bail said someone from the
temple would be coming. But why would he come here, to this room?
Then, behind Master Kenobi, she saw someone else, a taller man. Anakin
Skywalker! she thought. It can’t be! He’d had to be rushed to the hospital after his fight
with the ex-chancellor, and from the last report she’d heard (which admittedly was early this
morning) he was still there. She regarded him with not a little awe; most people would, she
thought, after seeing the scene on the holovid. Realizing she was openly staring at him, she
started to look away until she saw he hadn’t once looked at her. The older Jedi Master stepped
aside, and as he came fully into the room, Padme suddenly rose from her chair and ran to him.
OH!
Mon was stunned. She was very glad she was sitting down. THIS was Padme’s secret
lover ... husband. A man so forbidden his likelihood as a candidate had never even entered Mon’s
mind. No wonder she’d been hesitant to talk about it. No wonder she had tried to hide her
pregnancy. It would be a major scandal, just as she’d said. Mon wondered what the
general reaction would be, then stopped herself. What was her reaction? Certainly not revulsion
or even contempt. They stood holding each other, not with desire, but both as if the other were
made of fragile glass, their eyes locked.
“What are you doing here?” Padme said to him. “I thought Obiwan was taking you right
back to the apartment. You need to rest.”
“I rested at the temple,” he told her softly. “I have to make a statement in the rotunda
tonight. How are you - are you okay?”
For answer she touched his face in a gesture so intimate Mon had to finally avert her gaze.
She’d been taught all her life that the Jedi took oaths of celibacy and never forsook them. If
asked before now, she’d have declared the idea of pairing with one blasphemous, or at least highly
offensive. Now she doubted she would ever be able to look at a Jedi in the same light again.
Her eyes strayed to Master Kenobi, who was stroking his beard, looking thoughtful, and
she looked hastily away. No, she thought, I don’t find their relationship offensive at all.
It shocks me, yes, but not in a bad way. In fact ... in fact it only adds to the mystique he started
with the destruction of Palpatine on the holovid, like it continues some epic tale.
The thought stopped her. Padme had been afraid revealing the relationship would draw
attention from the reunification bill. That bill was not yet ready to go before the senate, but she
knew the opposition wouldn’t wait for their bid to gather strength. The stunning announcement
would draw attention from everything equally. Mon almost hated herself for using what she
couldn’t help but now view as an epic love story in such a profane way. Almost. But she didn’t
think Padme would mind. The balance of the republic was at stake.

Anakin and Obiwan sat alone in the pod that hovered before the chancellor’s podium in
the rotunda. The senate was in session and the house was packed as it had rarely been in recent
history. The Separatists had returned and now occupied their historic seats, although Obiwan
knew the voting functions in those particular pods had been disabled pending a resolution on their
reinstatement in the republic. He felt somewhat comforted to see Bail Organa in the role of
chancellor, though he knew it was somewhat of a false comfort. They were there to give a
deposition on the Jedi’s failure to identify Palpatine as a threat at the onset. Organa would
mediate the deposition, but he could not shut out the questions of those hostile to the order
without being accused of favoritism. He was a fair man, however, and Obiwan thought that at
least with him in control of the proceedings, the factions friendly to the order would have an equal
say.
Obiwan turned to look at his former padawan, who sat quietly beside him, his cloak
wrapped tightly around him. He’d slept all afternoon at the temple, finally awakening just as
Obiwan was about to leave to come here, and when he’d heard what was about to happen,
insisted he had to come along. The Jedi Master had tried to stop him; his former student still
looked too pale to him, his face somewhat gaunt. Obviously, he hadn’t entirely recovered, and
Obiwan knew this evening’s session was bound to be grueling. Yet Master Yoda had agreed with
Anakin’s wishes, saying that for him to attend would help them both. Outnumbered, Obiwan had
acquiesced, consoling himself with the thought that at least Padme had been - was - here; there
was no doubt in his mind now that she’d been entirely necessary for his brother’s recovery.
Chancellor Organa signaled that the deposition would begin; the acting Vice Chair
(Obiwan didn’t know his name) called the session to order.
“Tonight’s session begins the senate inquiry into former Chancellor Palpatine’s attempted
takeover of the Galactic Republic,” the acting chancellor began. “We will commence by hearing
the statements from the Jedi Order. A copy of the written deposition provided by the Jedi
Council head, Master Yoda, was previously provided for each of you. Two representatives of the
Council are now with us to answer any questions you may have about that deposition.”
Obiwan felt Anakin stiffen at the words ‘two representatives of the Council.’ He
glanced over at his former padawan reassuringly, seeing the sudden alarm in his eyes.
“But I’m not ...” he started to whisper.
“It’s okay,” Obiwan whispered back. “It’s just a technicality. You are a representative, if
not a member.”
His friend didn’t say any more about it, but he could tell the appellation still bothered him.
Anakin hadn’t yet agreed to return to the order, yet Obiwan knew that wasn’t the issue here. At
issue with his brother would be the technicality that - at the time of the ex-chancellor’s death - he
had not been a member.
The older man was more concerned with the fact that Anakin really did not have a good
grasp on the actual content of Master Yoda’s deposition. He’d tried to read it on the way over
from the temple to the rotunda, but had finally given up, admitting he was unable to concentrate
on it. Then again, Obiwan thought he was probably more concerned about Anakin’s admission.
“The chair recognizes the senator from Nadiripon,” Organa stated, interrupting his
thoughts.
A pod rushed out immediately into the center and hung beside the Jedi. Its main
occupant, a well-fed middle-aged Iriponi with a luxurious braid of blue chin-whiskers, leaned
forward anxiously. Obiwan braced; he knew the Iriponi seat had been one Palpatine had
cultivated.
“We would like to know,” he began, his question carefully worded and rehearsed (since
each representative was allowed only one), “Why, if Palpatine was a Sith Lord and therefore
Force-sensitive, and since the Jedi actively seek out the Force-sensitive in the systems of the
republic, of which Naboo is one, the Jedi were not aware of his presence - or at least his Force-
sensitivity - before he was elected to office?”
The senior Jedi glanced at Anakin, who sat quietly, aware that this was something Obiwan
would have to answer, not him. Still, he felt some odd distress in his brother that he couldn’t
quite place, and which he had no time to pursue. Now he had to focus on answering as best he
could. But even Obiwan had been no more than a youngling when Palpatine was first elected. He
tried to best compose his reply in the short time he had while the senator’s pod returned to its
dock. It wasn’t long before he heard the formal words from Organa: “The senate will hear the
Jedi’s reply to the question.”
Obiwan took a deep breath. “For the first part of my answer,” he said, “I would like to
state that the Jedi have never required the Force-sensitive to be tested, nor do we keep
dossiers on children tested whose parents declined to send them to the temple for training - as we
do not keep dossiers on any other citizens of the republic ...”

Anakin listened halfheartedly to his brother’s reply, his focus instead tuned to the
atmosphere of the senate chamber. The emotions of the thousands of beings in the rotunda
assailed him, but did not overrun him as he’d been afraid they would earlier. He still felt what
they felt, but the newfound connection he had to his brother had forged an extra layer of
insulation against the feelings of the masses. Their feelings were muted, dampened - well, except
for one. Though she sat on the opposite side of the rotunda, Padme’s presence was as clear and
strong to him as Obiwan’s. She was worried about him (so was Obiwan), but there was nothing
he could really do about that except continue on as he was. His experience earlier today in the
temple had convinced him that the surest and quickest way to completely recover was to face
squarely head-on everything he’d previously denied. Palpatine’s death was one of those things; he
still had no recollection of the event, although he’d been told the details of the encounter. He
hoped tonight might precipitate a return of that memory. (And on a more mundane level, he
hoped it would satisfy most, if not all, of the news cameras that had suddenly found it necessary
to follow him everywhere.)
Obiwan was expertly wrapping up the answer to the Iriponi’s question, managing, as he
always somehow did, to address what needed to be said without assigning blame to any of the
parties. He knew Padme had become anxious at the question; though she’d no doubt known in
advance that Naboo would be a likely target for attack. But Obiwan hadn’t become known as
‘The Negotiator’ for nothing. In Anakin’s opinion, at least, he was the best at what he did, and if
... And if ...
He caught his breath, the understanding of his own purpose in the rotunda tonight
unfolding before him: He was, as he had always been, Obiwan’s enforcer, the one who took the
lead when negotiations turned aggressive. Something about that role felt wrong; he’d oddly
known this on some subliminal level as soon as he’d understood the true meaning of his dream-
visions. He could no longer fight with - would no longer allow himself to fight with - a lightsaber
or any other weapon. But was he meant to play that role tonight in some as yet undetermined
way? He suspected now that Master Yoda thought so; he only wished he were as sure of his role
as the diminutive Council Head appeared to be.
He heard Bail Organa give the floor to the senator from Humbarine. As that system’s pod
approached, he felt a reserved amount of fear and trepidation radiating from her, although he felt
no hostility along with that as he had from the Iriponi. She stopped her pod farther away than had
the previous senator, though still close enough for her to see the Jedi clearly.
The slight human woman tabbed a button on her control panel to activate her microphone.
Anakin felt her brace herself for the question; she was clearly (to him) afraid to ask it, though
when she spoke, no fear was present in her voice or her outward manner.
“We would like to know,” she began, “given that Count Dooku was once a Jedi, and
given that he evidently willingly became an apprentice of a Sith Lord, what measures were in
place to prevent this abuse of Jedi power and where those measures failed; or if no measures were
in place, why they were not, and what is being done now to correct this problem?”
Obiwan was taken aback by the question, though on the surface, he covered his surprise
well. Anakin reached forward and switched off the microphone, which had been left on from the
previous response. He turned to look at his brother.
“That isn’t really a question about anything covered in Master Yoda’s deposition about
Palpatine,” whispered Obiwan. “ I’m sure it will come up; I’m sure it has come up, but ...”
- he broke off as if reading Anakin’s mind (and maybe he did, thought Anakin) - “no, I can’t
just tell them that. It would look bad; as if we’re trying to hide something from them. And
Senator Breemu wasn’t in Palpatine’s faction; her name was on the Petition of 2000.”
“You could tell them the ‘it has come up but’ part. They ought to understand that, at
least.”
“But what then? I’ve still got the problem that if I allow this, then I open the proceedings
to a lot of unrelated questions I’m not prepared to answer. But I can’t insult her, either.”
This is it, Anakin suddenly thought. The negotiations have broken down. This is
the moment. “It will be all right,” he said automatically.
“That’s reassuring.”
“No, it will,” he insisted. “Just say the ‘it has come up but’ part. I’ll take care of the rest.”
He felt Obiwan’s apprehension. Not that he could blame him; he’d never held any illusion
about being a diplomat himself; never been able to comprehend why adults couldn’t just speak
plainly to each other. He’d accepted that such a thing ‘just wasn’t done’ in politics by keeping
himself out of verbal negotiations completely. Now, however, he thought his way would
work, would have the result Obiwan wanted it to. Please trust me this time, Obiwan, he
thought. There wasn’t time for much else; the senator’s pod had returned to its dock and all eyes
were now on them.

Obiwan groaned inwardly, but even as his hand touched the switch for the microphone, he
knew in his heart that Anakin’s proposal was the right one. Knowing didn’t make it any easier to
take, because he wasn’t exactly sure what his friend was up to. Would he tell them, in no
uncertain terms, what they could go do with themselves? He cringed inwardly at the thought,
even while he took a small amount of private pleasure from it; he’d certainly heard Anakin’s
opinion often enough - and had even agreed with him - while they had been stationed at the far
edge of the galaxy during the civil war.
“The Jedi Council has certainly discussed the problem you have identified,” he stated.
“Unfortunately, owing to ...” he went on to lament the deaths of the bulk of the council members
in Order 66, and to relay that any action taken at that time had been rendered moot. But they
would certainly be re-addressing the problem once a quorum of Jedi returned, and that the senate
should be assured that outstanding Jedi sufficient for a quorum had been recalled to Coruscant
and should be arriving shortly. Of course, the senate would be kept informed of the council’s
progress on this and on any other problems which had arisen.
He stopped and looked over at Anakin, who was still seated, apparently expecting him to
go on. Momentarily unsure, he hesitated, then said, “While that technically answers the question,
we understand that it doesn’t fully address the concerns behind it. Master Skywalker would like
to speak to you about that.” He glanced at Anakin, and took his seat.
Anakin stood and cleared his throat. He looked grim, Obiwan thought, though he wasn’t
radiating grimness, or any strong emotion at the moment. Another moment and he might have
marveled at this, considering how emotional his padawan had always been, especially these past
couple of weeks. But he felt the Force stir; felt it swirl around them, and realized his brother had
called upon it to help him with his speech.
“I’m ... I’m not an eloquent speaker,” he began. “No one would send me to negotiate the
fine points of a treaty; I’m way too blunt to be a diplomat. So please bear with me if the words I
choose are not the ones someone used to these things would use.”
He paused and swallowed, then continued, “But I have been tempted by the Sith, and so I
know what methods they use and how a Jedi can be turned.”
The chamber grew wholly silent at his words. Even Obiwan realized he was holding his
breath and deliberately let it out.
“They can be turned by the same methods used on anyone else,” he declared, his voice
ringing into the silent void of the rotunda. “The same methods used on senators.”
The gasp was audible, so silent had the room become. From the corner of his eye, Obiwan
saw Organa’s head snap, a silent warning to the members to refrain from interruption.
“Palpatine did not use the Force to try to turn me,” Anakin continued. “He never needed
to. He used my dissatisfaction with what I viewed as unreasonable limitations placed on me and
my fears about emotionally painful events in my life. He used - he waited for - my greed and my
desperation, in the same way he used the greed and desperation of those here who were fed up
with the endless fighting over trivial concerns in the senate...”
Anakin went on, restating his point again and again, accusing the Separatists and senators
who had stood with Palpatine alike, but always careful to stand with them as one of the accused.
The Force filled the rotunda; yet for all the power behind his brother’s words, Obiwan sensed
many senators growing more hostile; not everyone would want to face the truth about themselves.
Still, by the time he’d closed his statement and taken his seat, he’d managed to succeed in what
Obiwan wanted, and without admitting to any guilt, since Anakin had not acted on the temptation
he’d claimed: Senator Breemu wasn’t insulted, as she had signed the Petition of 2000, and it was
doubtful if anyone would ask a question not on the agenda again if they had to risk Anakin
answering them.
So he was surprised, when Organa recognized the senator from Chandrila, to hear that her
question was for Anakin alone:
“Master Skywalker,” Senator Mothma began, “You mentioned ‘The Jedi’ several times in
your statement as if they were a group apart from yourself. It was rumored earlier that you had
resigned from the order recently. Is this true, and if so, was it due to the temptation you just
mentioned, or to something else, and if something else, what?”

[crystalcat]

Anakin stared at her. She had smiled kindly as she’d spoken, as if she already knew the
answer to her question, and he realized she did, at least partly. She’d been in the committee room
he’d met Padme in earlier. He glanced over at the chancellor. Bail Organa nodded to him in
acknowledgment; neither he nor the senator from Chandrila bore him any hostility; in fact, he felt
the opposite from them. They wanted him to speak publicly about his marriage. Now.
He stared across the gulf of the rotunda towards his wife, though she was so far away he
couldn’t see her clearly. Nevertheless, he felt the strength of the bond he had with her; she was as
shocked by the request as he was. It wasn’t that they’d intended to continue their charade; but he
had hoped, somehow, that they could simply go live somewhere anonymously, such as Naboo.
Certainly, he hadn’t wanted to create a scandal for Padme by announcing their marriage in the
middle of a congressional session. But Senator Mothma’s question left him little choice.
He stood and cleared his throat again as his questioner’s pod docked and the acting
chancellor nodded to him to speak.
“I have resigned from the Jedi, yes,” he admitted. “But it has - had - nothing to do with
being tempted by the Sith, or with any other political reason. I resigned because ...” - he paused,
taking a deep breath, and stared out over the sea of senators towards the seat of Naboo -
“because attachment and marriage are forbidden by the Jedi Code, and I have been married for the
past three years.” He felt the shock in the chamber as it once again ground to silence, and forced
himself to continue, his voice seeming to echo in the void, “We did try to keep our marriage
secret, but that is no longer possible, and ... and we wouldn’t want it to be anyway.” He licked
his lips. “I am married to Senator Amidala.”

[crystalcat]

Chapter 19

Padme woke. Daylight flooded the bedroom through the tightly closed blinds. The sight
of them - instead of the skyline of Coruscant - brought back with a vengeance the memory of the
previous night. She turned her head to look at her still sleeping husband. He’d been exhausted at
the end of the long evening; she was sure she’d seen him shaking by the time he’d finally reached
the bed.
She’d wanted to kill Mon several times over for making him confess in front of the entire
senate. It wasn’t as if they were actively keeping it a secret any longer, but, in Padme’s mind, it
had been hardly necessary for their marriage to be announced to the legislature - it had nothing
whatsoever to do with the matter being discussed, and was frankly none of the senate’s business!
In fact, the bombshell it had turned into had effectively tabled all further discussion for that night
(and maybe several more). Chancellor Organa had been forced to call a recess to the proceedings
in the wake of the furor following the announcement, and when she’d exited the rotunda, she’d
been accosted by her fellow senators and their aides alike, demanding detailed explanations of
their intimate lives (The most outrageous so far had to be, “Hey, honey, does he use the Force in
bed?”) She’d tried to ignore them, pressing towards where she knew Anakin should be, and
fortunately found him without too much trouble - Obiwan was helping him navigate through his
own encircling crowd as he stared in blinking apprehension at the newscam (the only one
permitted inside the building) hovering in front of his face.
But if she’d thought she’d had trouble getting to Anakin in the first place, it was nothing
like trying to get out of the building together. Whereas the crowd had parted fairly easily for her
alone, once they were together, no one wanted to budge. Even those not actively asking them
questions seemed to want to stand as if rooted into the floor and stare. She’d been glad when the
chancellor had appeared to help disperse them, though even then most were reluctant to stand
aside.
They’d made it outside only to be confronted with what appeared to be every newscam on
the planet, wanting to know such newsworthy information as when they’d gotten married and
when the baby was due. At least, she thought, they weren’t as openly rude as the senators and
their aides had been; none of them asked her anything about sex. Thank goodness. As Obiwan
demonstrated, they could be pushed aside fairly easily, so that they had little difficulty boarding
their transport, but even though she’d promised to make a public statement answering their
questions sometime the next day, the newscams, equipped with repulsorlift technology, had
followed them home. Some of the more brazen tried to come inside through the veranda, which
was plainly illegal. Anakin had Force-pushed the first few that entered, sending them careening
into the wall where their delicate sensors had been smashed. He’d also made sure that the others,
hovering just beyond the terrace, heard him order Artoo to stand guard on the veranda and shoot
down any more who came inside.
They’d had to close all the blinds and shut the apartment up as tightly as possible to keep
the newscams from happily filming them sleeping in bed. Or, she thought, doing any other
exciting things, like brushing their teeth or yawning (or, well, she acknowledged, maybe they too
wanted to know if he used the Force in bed. Not that they’d get a chance to find out even with
the windows left open; the both of them were so exhausted).
So here they were, she reflected, virtual prisoners in their own apartment, unable to even
look outside without being constantly photographed. But, she thought, looking at her husband’s
sleeping face, it wasn’t the end of the world. They still had each other. And as painful as it had
been, the awful scene had completely cleared the air. She ought to be grateful for that, at least.
Anakin sighed in his sleep and turned onto his side. Padme slowly extricated herself from
the bed, easing back the sheet and then sliding her feet off the edge of the mattress. She bit her
lip; the process would have been much easier if she weren’t pregnant. But she managed it anyway
by ending up in a sitting position on the carpet. Holding her breath, she eased the last of her
weight off the bed. She stood and looked down at her husband as she carefully replaced the
sheet, and it occurred to her that this was the first time they’d awakened in daylight together since
their honeymoon. Only she had no intention of letting him awaken just yet. He needed rest and
she intended to see that he got it.
She carefully tiptoed out of the room and went to find Threepio. Fortunately, she didn’t
have to pass the veranda to locate him.
“Mistress Padme!” he exclaimed. His voice seemed to shout in the quiet of the apartment.
“Threepio,” she whispered, “Shhh. Anakin is sleeping. I don’t want him to wake up.”
“Oh, I am dreadfully sorry, Mistress,” he said in a more subdued tone. “I am so inept as
these things; I can’t tell you how ...”
“Threepio,” she interrupted, “Have the newscams left yet?”
“Unfortunately not,” he reported. “Though Artoo has successfully kept them out of the
apartment.”
“Did he have to shoot any?”
“Just one, I believe,” he replied. “Shall I go and ask him for a status report?”
“No, no, that won’t be necessary,” she said. “Can you have a light breakfast ready for me
in my office after I shower?”
“Of course you may.”
“Thank you.”
She watched Threepio toddle off in the direction of the kitchen for a moment and then
halfheartedly returned to the bathroom. Truthfully, she was still a bit tired from the previous night
herself and would have preferred to sit and work comfortably in her nightgown. But, she thought,
if the newscams did manage to penetrate into the apartment, she wanted to be dressed for the
occasion. Wearily, she heaved a sigh as she realized she couldn’t even relax in her own home.

As she’d requested, Threepio brought her breakfast to her in the office after she’d
showered and dressed, where she was sitting in front of the computer, trying to work up the nerve
to turn it on. She knew she at least had to write a letter of apology and resignation to the queen;
no doubt she’d seen the fiasco in the senate on the holovid last night - or at least been informed
about it by someone who had. And it was not a good time for Naboo anyway, occurring right
after Palpatine had tried to take over the republic. She wondered if it could get any worse.
Only if you keep putting it off, Padme, she told herself, and switched on the
computer, cringing against the holonet splash page she’d previously chosen - Galactic
Headline News. As best she could, she tried not to look at it, but curiosity got the better of
her and she couldn’t resist a peek to see just how horrible it had gotten (well, she had to know so
she’d know how to word the letter of apology, right?). But when she read the actual headline -
several times, just to be sure she’d read it correctly - she could only sit there with her mouth open
in astonishment.
Star-Crossed Lovers Risk All
Quickly she scanned the article to see if the headline might not just be a sarcastic
comment, but the sentiment appeared to be genuine. She and Anakin were portrayed as two
visionaries standing against the dogmatic, narrowminded institutions of which they were (or had
been) a part. Hesitantly, almost not daring to push her luck, she selected more headlines on this
topic. And found them, an entire page of articles devoted to their Great Love Story - all written
without knowing a thing about their relationship, except that they happened to be a married
couple (well, okay, a married couple expecting a baby).
She wanted to read them all, but knew she didn’t dare spend the time or it would take her
all day (and longer), because on the holonet there were inevitably more where the first articles had
come from, and more after that, and then more on somewhat related articles, and on and on
seemingly forever (plus she had no desire whatsoever to read any speculation about, for instance,
the use of the Force in bed, which was probably floating around on the net somewhere. Ewww).
At random, she selected an article on about the middle of the page and read through a long piece
of sheer, fantastical speculation about how they’d met and married and even how they lived
together. To be fair, the author admitted up front it was speculation. She might have been
tempted to read more, so overwhelmed was she that they were being elevated to the rank of heros
instead of being declared the worst kind of pariahs, except that the addendum to the article
promised to clear up any further speculation on “these topics” once and for all in the later edition,
because “Senator Amidala promised a full statement later today.” She’d better get started writing
it, she realized. And then she remembered she was supposed to be writing her letter of apology
and resignation to the queen.
Well, that brought her back down to reality. The press being on her side, relief though it
was, did not excuse the fact that she had violated the law of her planet by not stepping down from
office when she’d married. Resolutely, she opened her mailbox so she could begin composing the
letter of contrition, and received the second shock of the day.
She’d expected it to fill up overnight after what had happened on the senate floor; that
wasn’t the surprise. What surprised her were the subject lines of the letters: Congratulations!
Congratulations twice! You really know how to pick them! I agree! and other more
incomprehensible phrases that nevertheless appeared to be praise rather than the condemnation
she’d expected. Just to be sure, she opened one titled Speech last night, and discovered it
was a letter praising Anakin for pointing out that the Jedi were people too, and not gods (which
he’d gone on to illustrate magnificently by their announcement - congratulations, by the way), and
that the writer hadn’t thought about it before, but he was right, the Separatists had been
hoodwinked in the exact same way the senators who’d sided with Palpatine had (she nted that the
sender was a signatory of the Petition of 2000). A quick peruse of ten more letters opened at
random showed an equal amount of approval. Not that there weren’t a few ugly letters sprinkled
throughout the list, immediately identifiable by their condemning subject line, but they were far
outnumbered by those of adamant support. For a moment, she just sat still, stunned, feeling
unable to really take it all in. Then the senator in her kicked in and she counted up the letters
from those she’d known had signed the petition to stop Palpatine and realized that with their
support, which she apparently now had, they had enough votes to reinstate the Separatists.
She couldn’t believe it, but it was true. Always assuming their loyalty didn’t waver before
the recess was over. No, she corrected herself. That wouldn’t be a problem; Bail Organa was on
their side; he would recall the senate if he thought passage of the reunification bill had a chance to
go through, though he might have some difficulty excusing its appearance on the agenda when the
“It’s all the Jedis’ Fault” inquisition (well, what was she supposed to call it?) hadn’t yet
concluded. Then again, looking at the letters in her mailbox, maybe it would conclude fairly
quickly. The problem she had, though, would be staying in office herself long enough to see the
bill pass. She had a feeling she’d need to be present to preserve the momentum. Then again, she
thought, she might just be wishing she was so indispensable; it wasn’t necessarily so.
It didn’t matter, she realized. There was nothing that would excuse her not resigning
today; any attempt to stay in office longer would be viewed with horror, given what had nearly
happened with Palpatine. She’d have to write the queen regardless. Although, she thought,
resigning didn’t prevent her from giving the queen full information, such as the nature of the
letters in her mailbox and her interpretation of what they meant (so long as she left off any
implication that she, Amidala, was a necessary ingredient for a positive outcome). She could also,
she realized, offer to resign pending her successor’s arrival (unless the queen preferred otherwise).
That should give her a day or two at the least.

She’d just finished sending off her carefully crafted resignation letter when she heard the
step behind her. She turned in time to see her husband pull a chair up, noticing that he had no
compunction whatsoever to sitting around the house in his sleepclothes. He smiled lazily, put his
arms around her, and kissed her on the temple.
“What’re you doing?” he asked quietly.
“Resigning from the senate,” she replied.
“Oh,” he said, the light going out of his eyes as he looked away. “I’m sorry.”
She turned and hugged him.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I knew I’d have to do this anyway when the baby came. At least
now we can both go to Naboo together.”
To her surprise, he stiffened at her words, though held her just as tightly. She pulled back
to look at his face.
“What’s the matter?”
He bit his lip, then shook his head slightly.
“Nothing.”
“Anakin!” she exclaimed.
He looked away, and it seemed for a moment that he was going to tell her, but he just
repeated, “It’s nothing, really it’s not.”
She stared at him. Finally, he let out a huge sigh and gave in.
“The Jedi want me to stay,” he said. When she didn’t comment, he went on, “They
offered me Mastership and a full seat on the Council.”
“Oh, Anakin,” she said, “You can’t pass that up; it’s what you’ve always wanted.”
He sighed again and stroked her hair.
“It’s not as important to me as it used to be,” he told her. “Really, it’s enough just to
think they offered it to me. I don’t have to accept. I’d much rather be with you.”
A dark thought struck her.
“They aren’t ...” she began hesitantly, “The don’t ... expect you to give up ... I mean ...
not be married?”
“Oh, no,” he assured her. “No, they don’t expect us to get divorced. That’s not a
problem anymore.”
She heard in his tone that a problem now existed elsewhere.
“You know we don’t have to live on Naboo,” she told him. “There are any number of
things I can do on Coruscant - in fact, I’d been thinking about this for quite awhile before
anything happened - about how we could stay together with our marriage hidden after the baby
came. It won’t be a problem; especially now that we don’t have to hide anymore.” Well, except
from the newscams, she mentally amended, hoping they wouldn’t be a lasting problem. At least
on Naboo it would be illegal for them to invade their privacy.
“Padme, it’s not that ...” he said, “I mean ... oh, I shouldn’t have even brought it up.”
She took his face with both hands and forced him to look at her.
“Yes you should,” she said firmly. “Now, what is the problem?”
She let go and he looked down.
“They ... um ... they want me to train a padawan,” he said quietly, then looked back up at
her, quickly adding, “But I know it’s not a good idea with the ... um ... baby ... coming. I’m sorry
I mentioned it.”
Strangely, the news did not really surprise her.
“One of the younglings,” she said.
He nodded. She thought she knew which one.
“You really want to do this, don’t you?” she asked without really understanding how she
knew.
“I don’t have to, Padme,” he insisted. “If I think about it, I’m not really even sure it
would be fair to the padawan - I have no intention of running off across the galaxy on a mission
somewhere right after the ... um ... baby comes. And it wouldn’t be fair to them to not have a
fully committed Jedi as their master.”
“Them?”
For a moment, he looked mortified, as if he’d said something he shouldn’t have, and she
could almost see the gears turning in his brain as he thought back over what he’d said. Finally, he
discovered what he’d meant: “The padawan,” he said. “I don’t know if it’ll be male or female.”
“You don’t?” she asked, surprised.
It was his turn to be mystified.
“Should I?” he asked.
She almost said something, but thought better of it. What did she know about how a Jedi
chose a padawan, anyway? It probably had nothing to do with her gauzy romantic notions. She
shook her head.
“No,” she said. “But I think you should at least consider it.” She looked up at him. “Go
meet with the younglings, at least. See if you have a connection to any of them. You might, you
never know.”
“Did you have someone in particular in mind?” he asked pointedly, foiling her attempt to
change the subject.
She glared at him while she twirled one of his curls in her fingers.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “You will choose the right one for you.”
“What if it’s not the one you expect?” he asked.
She thought about it; what he said was reasonable - suppose he came home with someone
completely different that the boy she was so sure about. It still won't matter, she thought,
and then repeated it again out loud: “It doesn’t matter. Whoever it is will be right for you, and
that’s the important thing, not my expectations. Go and meet them and see.”

[crystalcat]

Chapter 20

Obiwan sat alone with Master Yoda in the Council chamber. It was the first time he’d
been in the council-meeting tower since returning from Utapau, and he tried unsuccessfully not to
think of how empty it looked.
“Think not of the emptiness, Obiwan,” the ancient master told him, divining his thoughts.
“Filled it will be again, or changed. That is what discuss we must.”
“Shouldn’t we wait for a quorum of Jedi to arrive before we start discussing it?” he asked.
“Useless it would be to choose a new council if no council at all there may be,” Master
Yoda said cryptically.
“No council?” asked Obiwan incredulously. “I don’t understand, Master Yoda. I mean, I
understand some practices of the Jedi need to be improved, to prevent this ever happening again,
but surely the entire structure of the order wouldn’t need to be completely changed.”
“Patience, Obiwan. No council at all only one possibility is. Discuss this we will when
Master Skywalker arrives.”
Obiwan looked out the window towards Padme’s apartment.
“Will he arrive, Master Yoda?” he asked.
“He will,” the old master assured him. “A padawan to train he wants.”
“But he’s about to have his own child,” Obiwan protested. “Wouldn’t that interfere with
having a padawan? And Padme might object.”
“Object she will not,” Yoda declared. “And interfere it will not. See this you will. But
while we wait, about taking another padawan have you thought?”
Obiwan sighed.
“I’ve thought of it, yes, Master Yoda,” he said. “As you requested. And I know I ought
to, since there are so few of us left. But I can’t make myself interested enough in it somehow. I
think ... I don’t know ... I just don’t think it would be fair to a padawan for me to take one on
under those circumstances.”
“Interested, were you, in taking Anakin as your padawan?”
Obiwan hesitated. He’d been about to reply, “That’s different,” when he realized it really
was not. He’d taken Anakin on as an obligation, and while still filled with grief for his own dead
master, Qui-Gon. Now he was being asked to take on another padawan out of obligation, while -
he had to face it - filled with grief for the death of the Jedi Order as he’d known and respected it.
But the order was not really dead; it was just changing. As Qui-Gon was not really dead, just
changed. The only difference in Obiwan’s choice was that he was older.
“And that a boy looking at you, you do not have,” Master Yoda added, divining his
thoughts.
They were interrupted by the boy who had once looked at him, wondering if he’d be
trained - now a grown man and the most powerful of the living Jedi.
“I’m sorry, am I interrupting you?” Anakin asked, hesitating just outside the door of the
chamber.
“No, Anakin, we were just waiting for you,” Obiwan told him, glad for the interruption.
His former padawan stepped into the room, and for a moment, Obiwan allowed himself to
wonder if Anakin had been ill-served by having him thrust upon him as a master. The temptation
to join the Sith he’d spoken about in the rotunda - had that been a failing of Obiwan as a teacher?
Fortunately, he was not given time to reflect on his self-doubt.
“Called you together I have,” began Master Yoda, “The last of the council are we.
Mistakes we made. Learn from them we should, the future of the order to determine.”
Anakin looked apprehensively from Yoda to Obiwan.
“Am I a voting member of the council, then?” he asked warily.
“A full master you now are,” Master Yoda assured him. “A voting member of the
council.”
“He was saying,” Obiwan put in, “Before you arrived, Master Yoda was saying that there
might not be a council after today.”
“What?” Anakin asked sharply as he sat down on a nearby chair. Obiwan was oddly
pleased to hear him use the same tone of voice he’d formerly reserved for indignantly questioning
injuries he’d felt the council had done to him. “Why?”
“Deciding to disband the council we are not,” Master Yoda clarified. “Merely deciding
what the future of the order will be. Leaving all possibilities open we are.” He fixed Anakin with
a stare. “What think you?”
The young man seemed taken aback.
“Me?” he asked. “I ... I don’t know. I ... I don’t think it should be disbanded, if that’s
what you mean.”
Master Yoda nodded sagely and leaned back in his chair.
“A position on this council you coveted,” he pointed out. “And a position we granted to
you, a witness you were, nothing more. Think you the correct choice we made?”
“No,” came the answer immediately.
Obiwan raised his eyebrows, feeling himself begin to inwardly cringe as he’d so often done
in the past whenever Anakin failed to control an outburst of temper.
“Think you a full member you should have been made?” Yoda prompted, evidently
thinking the same thing as Obiwan. But to his surprise, the young man stared at the floor for a
moment and didn’t answer right away.
“No,” he said quietly when at last he did speak. “I admit, I wanted it. But even then, I
never expected the council to grant it; not as a choice forced on them by an outsider ...”
Obiwan was stunned.
“So, you’re saying that if the council had simply said ‘no’ that you’d have accepted that
decision without an argument?” he asked incredulously. He found it hard to believe after
witnessing the tantrum his former padawan had thrown not only in the council chamber but
afterwards to him alone.
But Anakin nodded.
“I’m not saying I would have liked the decision,” he said, “but it was ... it would have
been ...” He sighed. “They would have been following their own rules,” he finally finished.
When no one said anything, he added, “I even told the chancellor that the council would never
allow it. But he knew ... I’m sure he knew they would; that they’d do exactly what they did do -
allow me on so they could use me to spy on him.”
“As he used you to spy on the council,” Obiwan pointed out, though he was disquieted by
Anakin’s explanation. He wouldn’t have believed it a moment ago, but he really could see Anakin
accepting a full denial under those circumstances without an outburst. Not without a frown, no,
but certainly without a verbal argument.
“Yes, I see that now,” Anakin admitted. “But then ...” - he looked up at Master Yoda
suddenly - “The council allowed that too, by granting the position.”
“A mistake it was,” Master Yoda agreed, nodding. He pressed the fingertips of both
hands together and leaned forward toward Anakin. “The methods he used to make you doubt ...
the same they were? To contrast the code with actual practice?”
Obiwan’s former padawan licked his lips and stared at the floor. He nodded. “Not the
only thing, but ... but what I think ... um ... it made sense to me, I guess. I mean, I could see it;
could see what he was talking about. That he was right.” He leaned forward and put his head in
his hands, not looking up. “I’m sorry.”
Obiwan felt as though something cold had stepped on his chest. If he’d thought it would
be a bad idea to train a new padawan before, he was absolutely convinced of it now. He’d tried
so hard to be an example for his padawan, but he was only human. It hadn’t been enough. He’d
owed his padawan more.
“No, Anakin,” he said, “I’m sorry. I should have tried harder.”
The younger man looked up sharply, his eyes wide.
“No,” he said, his voice insistent. “Not you, Master. You always upheld the code. You
were ... I thought ... sometimes I thought you were the only one.”
Obiwan was stunned. He’d certainly never considered himself better than the others; how
could Anakin think so? Was it simply hero-worship? When his padawan had been a boy, he
might have thought so, but not now. Not after all they’d been through together. He must know
my faults by now, he thought.
But strangely, Master Yoda only nodded.
“Right he is,” he agreed. “Too arrogant the council had become. Too sure of ourselves.
If a Sith lord there was, know about him we were certain we would.”
The words brought back a memory long buried by too many others.
“But I thought that too,” he insisted. “I said so to Count Dooku, when he took me
prisoner on Genosis.” The implications of that long-ago conversation haunted him. “He was
telling me the truth.”
“Knew he did that believe him we would not,” the ancient master said.
“But I didn’t believe him either,” Obiwan insisted.
“Allow your belief to interfere with your actions, you did not,” Master Yoda pointed out.
“Report to us what he said, you did. The council it was who without investigation dismissed his
words. Knew, we thought we did, in our arrogance, how the Sith worked.” The old master
paused. “Master Skywalker is right. Upheld the code you always have.”
Obiwan was confounded. Did everyone think he was perfect? If so, he was bound to
disappoint them terribly, sooner rather than later. He looked at his former apprentice.
“Anakin,” he said, “I know you had to have seen my faults. I’m sure you’ve even pointed
them out to me on occasion. Where did you suddenly get the impression that I have none?”
The penetrating blue eyes regarded him.
“Master,” he said, “It’s not that you’re perfect. It’s that you always try; you always put
the code first, and if there’s something you can’t do, you admit it. The council ... I know it’s
wrong, but at the time it’s what I thought ... the council was no better than I was. They kept
telling me ...” - he glanced uneasily at Master Yoda - “... that I was unreliable because of my fear.
But they were afraid, too; afraid because they couldn’t use the Force to find the Sith lord. That’s
why they broke the law in having me spy on him. It seemed like they thought they were better
than me just because they were masters and on the council; not for any other reason.”
Obiwan sat in silence. He remembered the argument they’d had, in the gallery leading to
the chamber in which they now sat. Anakin had been righteously indignant of the assignment
given to him, an assignment Obiwan himself had felt was odious, yet was obligated to uphold on
behalf of the council. Even at the time, he’d known Anakin was right. It didn’t matter that the
chancellor had later been found to be the Sith lord. They hadn’t known at the time, and even if
they had suspected, the ends did not justify the means.
“So, what do we do?” he finally asked, looking to Master Yoda.
The old master sat in silence for awhile, thinking, but when he finally spoke it was not
what Obiwan expected to hear.
“Anakin,” he said, “Know you the public reaction to your marriage? Favorable it is.”
“Yes, Master Yoda,” Anakin replied. His eyes brightened suddenly as a realization
dawned on him. “They’re saying it proves the Jedi are people, like everyone else.”
“So the problem is just that the Jedi were too arrogant?” asked Obiwan. “We wouldn’t
need to disband the council to fix that, would we Master Yoda?”
“Disband the council not necessary is,” the old master agreed, “But not the only problem it
was. The code itself too rigid became. A set of guidelines only originally it was. If the Force
against the guidelines spoke, listen to it we should.”
They talked further, of the changes that should be made, and how best to incorporate
them, until it was far into the afternoon. Obiwan began to feel Anakin’s strength flagging, though
he gave no outward sign of it. Evidently Master Yoda did as well, because he abruptly called an
end to the meeting for the day, saying they could continue in the morning. For now, he said, they
should eat their long-overdue noon meal and then meet with the younglings.
“I can’t believe I wanted to be on the council so badly,” Anakin exclaimed once they were
alone together.
“You don’t like it?” Obiwan asked him curiously.
His brother sighed.
“It’s too much like politics. I want to do something, not sit all day and talk,” came
the answer. “I can’t wait until someone else gets here to take my place on it.”
Obiwan heard the words with dismay. He’d hoped, and Master Yoda had seemed to think
- hadn’t he? - that Anakin would return to the Jedi.
“So, you’re not planning to stay a Jedi then?” he asked, trying to sound casual.
Anakin stopped and turned to him.
“Would I have to accept a position on the council in order to stay?” he asked.
“Well, no,” Obiwan told him. No one had ever been forced to take a seat on the council.
But then he didn’t think anyone had ever refused, either.
The answer seemed to satisfy the younger man and they resumed their walk to the dining
hall.
“Have you decided who you want for your padawan yet?” Anakin asked him when they’d
gone only a few steps.
“I’ve thought about it,” Obiwan told him, “and decided I don’t think it’s a good idea for
me to take one on just now.”
His former apprentice stopped once more and faced him squarely.
“Why not?” he asked.
“I’m just not comfortable doing it,” he replied, trying to shrug off the question. “I just ... I
don’t know ... I just don’t have the enthusiasm for it at the moment. And I don’t think it would
be fair for the padawan to have an uninterested master.”

It’s my fault he doesn’t want another padawan, was Anakin’s first thought. But his
second thought was, No, that can’t be true. He remembered how he’d been sure his
Master would hate him when he’d finally confessed what had happened with the Sand People and
how mistaken he’d been about that. If Obiwan could love him anyway, even knowing that, he
wouldn’t feel like this about taking another padawan, would he? But that doesn’t mean he’d
want to risk going through that again, he reminded himself. He was just about to turn away,
sinking back into his depression, when he sensed something wrong about his thoughts.
The impression he had was not strong; in fact it was the barest of whispers from the
Force. If the old chancellor had still been alive, he knew he’d never have noticed it. But he did
now. Obiwan’s decision had nothing whatsoever to do with him. But it was not really due to
what his master claimed it was, either.
Tentatively, he reached out, trying to touch Obiwan in the Force to divine his feelings.
What he found surprised and saddened him. He was ashamed, also, that he hadn’t anticipated it.
The Jedi had been almost completely wiped out. While Obiwan had not been particularly close to
any of them, they were, in fact, the only family he could remember. Their loss had hurt him in a
way he didn’t completely understand. Anakin was really all he had left, but Anakin had his own
family. And I never felt at home here anyway, not really. I didn’t grow up in the temple.
His master felt empty. He was, in his own way, depressed on some level, though his
outward manner didn’t show it. Well, except for his refusal to train a new padawan, he thought.
And Anakin knew what he needed most was a new padawan to train. But how to convince him?
He knew from experience that bludgeoning him with nagging would not work (despite Obiwan’s
frequent lectures to Anakin).
It had taken less than a moment for all these thoughts to run through Anakin’s head.
Right now he could do nothing, so he would be the Jedi Obiwan had taught him to be and wait.
Well, he thought, at least he’d wait until after lunch.

They sat in silence for awhile and ate, until Anakin couldn’t take it any more. But he
knew he couldn’t just blurt out what he thought, either. He’d have to be subtle. This is going
to be really hard, he thought. He was capable of about as much subtlety as a spaceliner crash,
and he knew it.
“I bet there’s some way to use the Force to get this food to taste good,” he commented.
The clones - unarmed ones who had been reassigned to follow orders only from the Jedi - had
taken over the cooking duty from the Jedi who had lost their lives in the temple raid. As they
now also cleaned and performed other menial tasks there had once been a sufficient number of
Jedi to do. But ‘adequate’ was probably the best description the clones’ cooking could receive.
Obiwan didn’t answer right away - he was chewing, though his expression told Anakin his
reaction to the comment. Finally he swallowed and said, “You’re deliberately provoking me,
aren’t you?”
So much for subtlety. Still, Anakin could think of nothing else to do but plunge right
ahead anyway. He certainly had no intention of giving up.
“I’ve never understood the objection to using the Force for fun,” he said. “It’s not like it
has to be conserved because we’ll run out of it.”
Obiwan sighed heavily, and his former padawan noted with pleasure that he seemed to be
about to at least play along with him.
“You know very well why,” he said. “It’s so we don’t flaunt what we can do in front of
those who can’t do it. In fact this is exactly what we were just talking about with Master Yoda.
Being a show-off is a form of arrogance.”
“We’re in the Jedi temple,” Anakin pointed out. “What would the objection be for using it
for fun here?”
Obiwan finished taking a drink of his water.
“Oh, so that’s where you’re going with this,” he said as he set down his cup. “I might
have known. Anakin, taking a padawan is not something you can talk me - or anyone, for that
matter - into.”
Anakin looked down into his now empty plate. The memory of his initial doubt stayed
with him; he no longer believed it, but it occurred to him that Obiwan would not necessarily know
that. If he blamed himself for Obiwan’s decision to not take a new padawan, he might be able to
persuade him that way, he thought. It would even be possible to draw on that tiny core of doubt
to fool his Master through the Force about his own real feelings.
He was just about to look up and speak when he realized what he was doing. A cold
weight settled into his stomach. Uncontrollable rage engulfed him, and screaming “NO!” and
rising half out of his chair, he seized his fork from the table and hurled it against the wall in his
anger, then slumped to the floor, shaking. How could I think ... I can’t think ... Noooo ...
His thoughts jumbled in confusion, anger, guilt.
Obiwan was on the floor in front of him, staring at him, taking him by the arms. No!
He pulled away. Not that! That was what he wanted! What he’d been going to do!
“Anakin!” his brother exclaimed. “What is the matter? What happened?”
Anakin buried his head in his hands, pulling at his hair. He didn’t want to talk to Obiwan;
he wanted to run to his room and shut the door and stay there. If he talked to Obiwan, he’d have
to tell him what he’d been going to do ...
But he knew he’d have to tell him anyway, no matter how much he didn’t want to face it.
He’d never be free unless he did. Eyes burning, he lifted his head, though he couldn’t look at his
brother’s face. Staring instead at Obiwan’s right hand, he tried to speak, “I ...” but his voice
refused to work. The older man reached for his cup of water from the table, but Anakin waved it
away. He cleared his throat and whispered, “I know how Palpatine fooled the Jedi.”

[crystalcat]

Chapter 21

At Anakin’s words, Obiwan sat down on the floor. It had been almost the last thing he’d
expected to hear; what he’d expected was that Anakin might have taken his own refusal to train a
padawan personally, since the younger man had been the only one he’d ever trained. He had to
admit, however, that Anakin’s outburst of temper had seemed a bit strong for that. But he’d been
prepared to reassure Anakin on the padawan issue; now he had no clear idea of how to proceed.
Have faith. A way will present itself.
He started. The words came to him in Qui-Gon’s voice, though they seemed to be inside
his own head. Regardless of their origin, it was good advice, though he’d have to be patient to
follow it, and simply wait for now.
While he was waiting, Anakin told him what he’d planned and why, and how he’d seen
that such a small manipulation could be magnified through the Force to encompass whatever he
liked. It gave Obiwan a chill to think that he would have fallen for it; not that he would have
necessarily been manipulated into choosing a padawan against his better judgement, but that he
would have believed in Anakin’s sincerity.
“I know you won’t be able to trust me now,” his former padawan whispered, his head
sinking back into his hands.
Obiwan thought a moment and realized that it oddly wasn’t true. He told Anakin so.
“You knew right away that it was wrong and you even admitted your entire plan to me,”
he explained. “I can’t see what’s not to trust there. Once you understood what you were doing,
you didn’t like it either.”
The younger man sighed and visibly tried to get himself back under control, but he still
would not meet Obiwan’s eyes.
“Master,” he began, “suppose I don’t realize it in time to stop myself? He’s in my head.
He’s been there for a long time, feeding his thoughts to me, making his thoughts mine. I don’t
know which part is me - the real me - anymore. I don’t even know what I want - what Anakin
Skywalker wants.” He stopped and peered hesitantly at Obiwan from the corner of his eyes, a
look of pain etched on his face. “I can’t even trust myself,” he whispered.
Obiwan sighed. He’d been so grateful to have his friend seem to be returned to normal
that he hadn’t considered that it wouldn’t be quite that easy. Anakin had been friends with the
chancellor almost since he’d arrived on Coruscant to begin his Jedi training. He’d been not quite
ten years old at the time; young and impressionable, and the order - Obiwan in particular, he
forced himself to admit - had unknowingly allowed him to be heavily influenced by a Sith lord.
No wonder he was such a difficult student! he suddenly realized. Always before, he’d
assigned his former padawan’s trying behavior to his being the Chosen One, to having such a
great Force-sensitivity, to his being late in coming to the temple for training, or to his own youth
and lack of experience. Or mostly, he reflected, to all of the above. It occurred to him only now
that he’d been fighting Palpatine for influence over the boy since the very beginning.
The line of thought he was following brought Obiwan up short, and he forced himself to
look at his own motivations fairly. Had he been avoiding the taking on of another padawan
because he’d had such a difficult time with Anakin? Could it be that without his even
realizing it, the idea of fighting that kind of battle had wearied him before he’d even thought about
it? But looking at the crumpled man in front of him, he knew that was honestly not true.
Training him as a padawan had been incredibly difficult and time-consuming. But it had been
completely and totally worth every moment. Without accepting the responsibility Qui-Gon had
asked of him, he wouldn’t now have such a good friend and brother, and he would be less of a
Jedi because of it; the training had not been one-way - he’d had to excel as a Jedi to set an
example for his padawan. It had been a part of his own training as well. There had also
been, he acknowledged, the added benefit that having to immediately focus on training a new
padawan had lessened the impact of his shock and grief over losing Qui-Gon. It had kept him
busy when he otherwise might not have been. And, he added, this padawan still needed him now.
He caught his breath at the thought. While he’d acknowledged his attachment to Anakin
at the hospital, he hadn’t taken the thought to its conclusion. Was he so attached he couldn’t let
the relationship go? Was that why he didn’t want a new padawan?
“Anakin,” he began, feeling his way as he went along, “You’re not a Sith at heart. As
long as you think about what you’re doing, you will know what is right and do it.” He stopped,
then softly added, more to himself than to his former padawan, “You don’t need me to teach you
right from wrong anymore.”
But Anakin caught the inner meaning in his last comment. He sat up and took a deep
breath, trying to steady his voice. After a moment, he said, “I’m sorry, Mast ... Obiwan.” After
another deep breath, he continued, “I ... um ... I forget that what happened is hard for you too.”
He looked up, and his eyes, though still red, were clear. “I still have my family, Obiwan. But the
Jedi were your family and you’ve all but lost them. I think ...” - he stopped for a moment, clearly
concentrating on something internal, and Obiwan eerily realized he was making sure the thought
he was about to share was truly his own - “I think that if you took a padawan, it would help
you through the loss. And it would give you a purpose. That’s my ... opinion, not ... an order.”
He pressed his lips together and looked away.
Obiwan sat stunned, forced to acknowledge to himself that Anakin was quite likely
correct. Unfortunately, knowing didn’t make him want a padawan any more than he had the
moment before. He simply could not make himself be interested. But he acknowledged that he
should at least make some reasonable attempt to interest himself.
“I can’t promise you that I’ll choose a padawan,” he said, “But I’ll come with you to see
the younglings when you choose yours this afternoon.”
Anakin looked startled, as if he’d forgotten he was expected to choose one himself.
“I ... I can’t,” he said. At Obiwan’s questioning look, he continued, “I’ve been too
corrupted by the Sith lord. How can I teach an apprentice?”
Though his own path was still clouded to him, Obiwan suddenly saw Anakin’s clearly, and
knew why Master Yoda had suggested it.
“Anakin,” he said, “You told me earlier, when we were in the council chamber, that I was
a better Jedi than the others; that I followed the code more closely. If I was able to do that, the
reason was you - because I had to make myself better to be an example for you. It was hard and I
had to think about it every minute - how my actions would look to you. Training a padawan is
probably the best possible way to clear your own mind and force yourself to understand what is
right. I think you should take one. Not that you aren’t one now, but I think it could only make
you a better Jedi.” He paused a moment, then, mindful of his brother’s earlier disclaimer, added,
“That’s my opinion, anyway. Not an order.”
Anakin stared at him for a long minute.
“We’ll go together, then,” he said as he rose from the floor.

Anakin stared at the younglings arrayed before them with not a little discomfort. They
were sparring with lightbokuns on the practice floor - two pair of fencers, while the rest sat on the
edge, watching and waiting their turn. He and Obiwan sat in the guest chairs, though they were
far enough away the children could not hear their conversation. It was, in his mind, just a bit too
reminiscent of the slavery auction block. Instead of the trepidation of the slaves on auction and
the avarice of the sellers, however, he felt the insistence of the younglings and their painful desire
to make a good enough impression to be chosen.
Padme had thought he would feel some connection to one of them, but, choking down his
distaste for the display of flesh and looking at them objectively, he couldn’t feel any. At least, he
could feel no more for one than the other; he empathized with their feelings, although he’d never
had to go through this himself. Possibly, he thought, he might feel differently about one of them
once that one got a turn to fight. Obiwan, however, seemed quite intent on one of the matches
currently underway.
The two boys were well matched in size; one had short blonde hair, about the color
Anakin’s had been at the same age. The other’s hair was a medium brown. They sparred, to all
outward sign well matched in technique as well. But as a Jedi, Anakin could feel an undercurrent
of the fight in the Force. It was not just a practice match, nor even a contest between them. The
fight was quite real; the dark emotions of both boys were engaged beyond what they should have
been as Jedi students. This, he realized, was what had gotten his master’s - his former master’s -
attention. Yet Obiwan’s attention was not critical, as he’d expected it to be.

The fight between the two boys took Obiwan back to his last days as a youngling, to just
before Qui-Gon had accepted him as a padawan. It had been just such a fight he’d been in with
his rival, Brock, that had caused Qui-Gon to pass him by (his master had relented later when
they’d been thrown together for a mission anyway). Looking at the two boys now gave him a
better understanding of why the knights and masters had doubted him, and exactly how it had
been fairly easy for Brock to lay the blame for any wrongdoing squarely on him, when it in fact
belonged at least to them both equally. But also, because of his own experience, he thought, he
had a better idea of what was going on in these boys’ minds, and which one was the likely
instigator. Still, he wouldn’t rely totally on such a nostalgic impression for choosing a padawan.
In fact, using Qui-Gon’s method (though his master hadn’t thought of it as a method at the time)
of testing one first would be the wisest thing to do, he thought.
He stopped himself abruptly. Had he actually been considering the blonde boy as a
padawan? No, he decided. He’d been looking at the situation with an open mind, as he’d said he
would do, nothing more. For now, at least, there was nothing to suggest the blonde boy as a
possible candidate other than that he reminded Obiwan of himself at that age - simply because he
was fighting someone who reminded him too much of Brock. And that was not a good enough
reason.
He felt Anakin regarding him intently and turned to look at his brother.
“Shouldn’t you be looking at the younglings?” he inquired.
“I did,” Anakin replied, “But I can’t see any way to choose one over another.”
Obiwan nodded; aside from the two in the fight he’d been watching, he felt much the
same.
“Except,” his brother added, “I think I can rule one out.”
“I’ll bet I can guess which one, too,” he quickly agreed, then second-guessed himself.
Suppose Anakin had ruled out the blonde boy in the fight and not the brown-haired one as he
had?
But his brother only nodded as if they’d decided against the same child together, and
observed, “He’s a bully.”
Obiwan leaned sideways to talk more privately.
“I was originally going to tell Master Yoda that I’d just take whoever was left over as my
padawan,” he said. “But now I don’t think that’s such a good idea; I suspect I know who I’d get
saddled with. I’m glad you talked me into coming.”
The match abruptly ended in a flurry of blows by the blonde boy who had finally had
enough.
“Good for him,” Anakin cheered quietly, letting Obiwan know they’d been talking about
the same boy at least, though he hardly agreed with his former padawan’s sentiments.
“He shouldn’t have lost his temper like that,” he observed.
Anakin looked squarely back at him.
“A good thrashing is the only thing a bully understands,” he said bluntly.
Words rose to Obiwan’s lips. For a moment, he squelched them down, then decided they
might be better said after all: “Was that Anakin Skywalker the Jedi talking?” he asked softly.
“No,” his brother answered, unruffled. “That was Anakin Skywalker the former slave
boy.”
They were silent a moment, then Obiwan said, “I thought the same thing when I was his
age. But my opponent always managed to use my temper against me after the fight was over. It
caused more trouble than losing would have caused.”
Anakin looked at him incredulously.
“YOU had a temper?” he asked.
“I still do,” Obiwan admitted.
His brother rolled his eyes and looked back down at the practice floor where two more
pair of fencers were beginning their match. After a moment, he said, “You know, he was really
hoping you would pick him.”
“He was?” asked Obiwan, surprised. From his experience as a padawan, he’d expected
most of them to be lining up for the Great Hero, Anakin. The bully had certainly been trying to
impress his brother, quite deliberately. He told Anakin as much.
“I could tell,” was the response. “But it’s not going to happen. Although ... I don’t know
... if he didn’t want me so badly as his master, and I wasn’t married, maybe. It would certainly be
a challenge. But I wouldn’t want a kid like that anywhere near my babies.”
“Babies?” Obiwan asked, perplexed. “As in more than one baby? Are you planning a
large family right away, then?”
“We’re having twins,” his brother announced. “Don’t tell Padme.”
“Don’t tell her? Isn’t she going to find out?”
“When they’re born, yes,” Anakin said. “But she wants to be surprised.”
“How can she know she wants to be surprised when she doesn’t know she’s going to have
twins to be surprised about?”
“Because,” his brother explained, as if talking to a child, “The first time she went to the
med-droid, she filled out a request to not be informed of anything special about the ‘baby’ unless
it was a health issue. She didn’t want to know the sex either. So since the med-droid hasn’t told
her - and it must know about it - I know she wants to be surprised.”
Obiwan let his brother’s mild rebuke pass; what did he know about childbirth, anyway,
beyond the rudimentary mechanics involved? Only now he couldn’t get over a sudden mental
picture of Anakin surrounded by multitudes of children. But such an image brought up something
else he’d wondered about.
“Anakin,” he began, “Even with one baby, I’d wondered about this, and now with two on
the way, I’ve got to ask: Are you sure you want a padawan to train at all? I’m sure Master Yoda
would not insist under the circumstances.”
“No,” his brother admitted, “But Padme said it was all right; that I’d know the right
padawan to choose. I’m sure she even had someone particular in mind.”
“You’re going to let your wife choose your padawan?”
“She didn’t say who it was,” he said. “Just that I’d know when I saw him.”
“And do you?”
Anakin shook his head. “No,” he said. “Except that it won’t be Marrick Doth.”
“That’s the bully?”
The younger man nodded.
“The other boy’s name - the one that wants you for his master - is Lige Noonen,” he said.
Obiwan let this pass; he hadn’t really wanted to know the boy’s name - it would have been
easier to walk away thinking of him only as the ‘blonde boy.’ He was sure Anakin knew this, too,
which was why he’d said it.
Ignoring the comment about the boy’s name, he asked, “Are you going to choose a
padawan anyway, regardless?”
But Anakin was staring intently at the small crowd of younglings, who had now finished
their matches, and his answering, “No,” seemed distracted.
“Is something the matter?” Obiwan asked him.
Instead of answering his brother, however, Anakin called across the room.
“Master Yoda,” he said, “I’m only counting eleven and I thought there were twelve
students. Is someone missing?”
The ancient master conferred with the group. In the murmur of voices, Obiwan heard the
name ‘Kuniren’ mentioned. Anakin did too, and through the Force, he felt his brother snap to
attention at the name.
“You know who that is,” Obiwan observed, but his brother made no immediate reply;
merely seemed to be searching inside himself for something. That’s the one, Obiwan
thought, feeling odd that he knew through the Force who Anakin should choose before he knew
who his own padawan would be.

Lige allowed himself a small moment of hope for his friend Kuniren - Master Skywalker
had asked about him, if only indirectly. That must have meant that he hadn’t yet chosen any of
the others, at least - including Marrick (which gave Lige a satisfaction he knew he shouldn’t
indulge in). He knew Kuniren longed to be Master Skywalker’s padawan, even if he hadn’t said
so out loud. He hadn’t dared; he’d never have heard the end of it from Marrick. Not that
Marrick hadn’t been busy telling him how he’d never get chosen by even the most boring knight.
Lige hoped Kuniren hadn’t believed that – he didn’t think he had, but he had assumed he’d never
get chosen by one of the two remaining masters; he knew Kuniren had a problem with control,
and even he himself had this afternoon forfeited any chance he might have had to be Master
Kenobi’s padawan for that failing. The knowledge bothered him, but he let it go and focused on
his friend’s small hope. There were knights still coming who would take padawans, after all.
“Kuniren Valkuni missing is,” Master Yoda related to the two masters. To the students,
he said, “His whereabouts, does anyone know?”
Marrick was bursting to tell, and Lige knew if he gave the information, he’d find a way to
twist it into something worse than it was. So he jumped in ahead of the boy he’d dueled.
“He’s in his room,” he said.
Master Yoda nodded, and Lige knew the ancient master understood everything. But
Marrick couldn’t contain himself.
“He knew he’d never get chosen, anyway,” he said derisively.
At Marrick’s words, both of the masters rose from their chairs and started across the floor
towards them. Lige noted that Master Skywalker seemed to be paying little attention to where he
was going, but stared out the door instead. When he passed Marrick without acknowledging him,
the boy’s smug smile faded.
Unlike Master Skywalker, Master Kenobi stared hard at Marrick and, from his expression,
seemed about to reprimand him, but at the last minute thought better of it and turned to Lige
instead. His eyes widened with recognition as he did so, and Lige’s heart began to race. He
remembers me, he thought, daring to hope that he might still have some small chance after all.
But all Master Kenobi said was, “Are you Kuniren’s friend?”
Lige nodded. “Yes,” he said.
After a quick glance at Master Skywalker, the older man said, “Can you show us where
his room is?”
He turned to go and the entire class started to follow until Master Yoda called them back.
“Only one to find Kuniren’s room is needed,” he said. “Put away the training materials we
must.”
They knew that meant the demonstrations were over. The masters had not chosen
anyone. Walking ahead of the two men, Lige tried not to hope too much that he or Kuniren still
might have a small chance.

Obiwan had been shocked to discover that Lige was the boy who had discovered Kamino
for him in what now seemed another lifetime. He’d been very impressed with him then, and - he
had to be honest with himself - had even thought at the time that if he wasn’t already training a
padawan, he’d want someone like that boy to train. He also had to admit that he was still
impressed with Lige now. True, the boy had lost his temper during his fight with the bully. But
he knew he himself would have done the same at his age. And, he could almost hear Anakin’s
voice asking him (though he hadn’t done so) what the point was in training someone if they were
perfect to start out with. What he’d been most impressed with now, however, was Lige’s obvious
hope that his friend might get chosen, which was at least equal to the hope he had for himself.
He stopped in front of a closed door in the youngling quarters, glanced back at the two of
them, and knocked, then waved the door open slightly with the Force and stuck his head inside.
Obiwan heard a muffled, “Did he choose you?” before Anakin stepped forward and pushed the
door open the rest of the way.
Obiwan barely had time to notice a dark-haired boy sitting on the floor studying a star
chart before he looked up and saw Anakin staring down at him. The new padawan’s mouth
dropped open as his eyes met his new master’s, and Obiwan felt the sudden swell in the Force, the
same crescendo of outpoured love he’d felt two days ago in the meditation chamber when Anakin
had finally managed to let go and trust him.
He looked down at Lige and realized the boy felt it too. Tapping him on the shoulder, he
indicated that they should walk down the hall a bit and leave the newly formed team alone.
They stepped into a small study area that had been built into a junction in the passage, and
Obiwan sat down, indicating that Lige should also take a seat. He’d decided to level with the
boy; explain to him how he wasn’t quite ready to take an apprentice, but that he’d admired his
skill and consideration for others, and that if Lige wanted to, he was quite willing to pair up with
him on a trial basis. He even opened his mouth to say just that. But the Living Force was so
thick in the hall that when he drew a breath to speak, what came out instead was, “I would very
much like to have you as my apprentice, if that is acceptable to you.”

[crystalcat]

Chapter 22

Kuniren looked up from his computer screen. Across from him, the blue light from the
other viewer in use was reflected onto his master’s face. He and Master Skywalker were currently
alone in the Jedi temple library doing research for their first mission together. Kuniren could
hardly believe it.
He’d never truly believed that no one would choose him (regardless of what Marrick
said); and after the Jedi massacre, he’d been sure of it - they’d need to re-build the Jedi order
(though he felt guilty for thinking of it so calculatingly). But to be chosen by the man he’d wanted
for a teacher - the only Jedi he’d ever felt he could really get close to - was an unbelievable dream
come true. And, once he’d found out what their initial mission was to be, it became even more
extraordinary. It was remarkable first of all, because he’d been wrong about the need for all the
students, no matter what, to be trained as padawans: He and Master Skywalker were being sent to
take the youngest group home, to their parents, on their home planets. After three weeks, Master
Yoda had determined that no more knights had survived than had originally reported in. There
wouldn’t be enough to train them all. He knew also (Master Skywalker had told him) that the
council had re- thought its policy to train only extremely young children. They would begin, in the
future, when more masters were available to teach, to train adults instead. While the Jedi would
lose the influence it now had over the minds of the very young, it would gain instead members
who understood what it was like to not be a Jedi; those who could better relate to the people they
served. Of course, there would be exceptions. They had found one student already whose home
and parents had been casualties of the war; she could not return home and so would stay on as a
Jedi youngling. Kuniren also knew that Senator Amidala was setting up an orphan placement
service in conjunction with her father’s organization, to foster war orphans, and that any found to
be Force-sensitive would be sent to the temple. But even this group of younglings would not be
trained as he had been. Instead, they would be sent to the free schools on Coruscant, with the
other non-Jedi students their age, for their academic subjects.
He looked back down at the screen, trying to concentrate. It was his task to locate the
address on the planet, once his master had sent him the information from the research he was
doing in the students’ records. So far he was not too far behind, even though what his master was
doing was a lot less time-consuming. But he knew that once the addresses were found, that
Master Skywalker would need to plot the flight paths to their locations from orbit as well. Forcing
himself to concentrate at least for a moment, he matched the address in the records with the most
recently known one for the family, before another address appeared on his queue.

Contrary to Kuniren’s belief, Anakin was not simply looking up addresses in the student
records, which would have taken very little time. He was also doing some research for Padme,
using the Jedis’ records of the war, locating the most badly damaged populated areas for use in
coordinating her effort to find war orphans that needed help.
The queen of Naboo had predictably appointed a new senator, however she had not
insisted that Padme should yet step down from her official duties as a representative of their
planet. Instead, Padme was expected to ease her replacement into office by acquainting him not
only with the legislation of concern to them, but also with the other senators, the press, and any
other professional contacts Padme thought would be of value before she returned home to give
birth to her child. Anakin interpreted the queen’s decree as a means to let them keep their
apartment until they were ready to return to Naboo, while capitalizing on Senator Amidala’s
current popularity, since the entire “introduction” of the new senator had taken less than two
days. After meeting the newly appointed senator from Naboo, Anakin was just as glad there was
so little involved, since the man had turned out to be a former artist - one with dark hair and
dreamy eyes (as his wife had once described to him). He’d returned to public service, he said,
because when the war broke out, he’d felt it was his civic duty. Anakin had surprised himself by
not being nearly as jealous as he’d thought he’d be, though in retrospect, he supposed it was
because he could tell beyond any doubt that his wife was not attracted to the man at all. Any
more. That, and the fact that the guy was inexplicably terrified of him. He didn’t know why,
though - he’d been perfectly polite when Padme had introduced them, just before rushing off to
manage her newly created job.
Expecting to be separated from her governmental duties at least by the time the baby
arrived, his wife had seized upon the war orphan placement service when she’d learned from the
Corellian senator, whose planet had suffered heavy damage, that there was no centrally
coordinated system to handle the problem, and that many children, who had nowhere else to go,
were living on the streets as members of thieving gangs and worse. But even those orphans who
were not actively being exploited could benefit from a centrally coordinated agency funded by the
senate. Anakin had no doubt that with Padme’s formidable conviction, the senate would fully fund
her agency by the time their children were born.
He paused in the middle of his search through war-ravaged planets, the name of a senator
jumping out at him, though her identity was meaningless. It was the form her name took which
aroused his curiosity: Senator Janamin Nojana, representative from the planet Ranbre. He glanced
up at his padawan, who was diligently studying his screen (but hadn’t been ten seconds earlier, he
knew). There’s only one way to find out, he thought, and keyed his apprentice’s name into
the student record file. Sure enough, his planet of origin was Ranbre. He could almost be certain,
then, that someone else close to him had come from there as well, but that information would wait
a bit. For now, he was going to abuse the power he’d been given to look up Kuniren’s
background; there might be something there that would help him understand the boy, he thought,
remembering he’d only found out recently that Obiwan had never known he’d been a slave. But
though the planet’s history showed that it sat in one of the worst locations in the galaxy, where it
was always going to be first in line for an attack on the republic, it had managed to be relatively
peaceful for the three years Kuniren had lived there. The reporting Jedi, who was traditionally the
one who found the new youngling, related nothing out of the ordinary - Force-sensitive boy
(midichlorian count given - Kuniren’s was quite high, as Anakin could have predicted), middle
child, parents were minor governmental officials and had initiated contact with the temple
themselves. The only unusual thing, in the writer’s opinion, anyway (Anakin didn’t think it
unusual at all), was that the boy had cried when taken away from his family.
He sighed, and concentrated a moment on feeling the boy in the Force. His padawan was
unusually sensitive emotionally. The Jedi - at least the Jedi up until now - would have considered
that a weakness to be overcome, but Anakin didn’t think so. Kuniren had been able to reach him
when he’d been on the brink of death due, he was sure, to that very sensitivity. And he’d used it
to create an instantaneous master-padawan bond, something Obiwan had told him it could take
years to achieve (and had, for them, thanks to his listening to Palpatine, but he wasn’t going to
think about that right now). It was a gift and not an obstacle. But Anakin still had to figure out
how to best guide him into training it. For now, he’d simply try to provide the emotional stability
the boy craved. Maybe that would even turn out to be enough. He knew that when he
concentrated on it, he could feel his padawan emotionally relaxing, and the boy worked faster.
He glanced down at his copy of Kuniren’s queue. One more and they’d have enough to
take the second batch to Obiwan. His old master had been elected to notify the parents that their
children were returning to them, and to gauge their reactions (Anakin had been disqualified for
that due to his fame; it was felt that the parents might feel they were being coerced into taking
their children back if he was the one who called them).
The thought of Obiwan (mixed with the need to do something besides add another address
to his padawan’s queue for the moment) decided him to look up whatever was in the records
about him (if anything still was; for all Anakin knew, the records were deleted when the padawan
graduated to knight). But he keyed him in, and found, as he expected, that Obiwan was also from
Ranbre. But his background was quite a bit different from that of his apprentice.
Obiwan had been discovered by the Jedi quite by accident. A knight-padawan team had
been sent to investigate an apparent attack on the planet which was suspected of being an inside
job. Much of the capital had been reduced to rubble, and while the two Jedi were on their way to
the temporary government headquarters, they’d passed a bombed-out building and felt a sudden
surge in the Force. Realizing it likely meant someone was still alive inside (and probably trapped),
they investigated. The knight (the one who’d written the report, Syfo-Dias), had called on the
Force to help him pinpoint the survivor’s location and had been surprised when he was
“answered.” With the help of some bystanders, they dug down beneath a heap of shattered
concrete and rebar, and found a dehydrated two-year-old in a soiled diaper lying next to his dead
mother. Syfo-Dias wrote that it was evident the baby was instinctively trying to use his
Force-ability to wake his mother up, not to be found himself. He’d cried when they’d carried him
away from her. The record went on to state how they’d discovered the baby’s identity, but Anakin
didn’t need to read any more. His mind returned to the visions he’d had of his own mother’s
death, and how Obiwan had kept telling him, “dreams pass in time.” He understood then that his
master had long dreamt about his own loss and had been trying to help him with the only
reassurance that had worked for him.
“Master?” a soft voice asked him. He looked up to see the young face of his padawan
looking at him with concern, his deep brown eyes huge. “Are you all right?”
“Yes, I’m fine,” he replied, blinking away the tears that had formed in his eyes. “Just
reading about something sad that happened a long time ago. If you’ve got that last one done, we
can take it to Master Kenobi and have a break for awhile.”
As they left the library, Anakin thought about the war orphan that had become his master,
and how much the order had gained by finding him.

They came out of lightspeed above the jewel-like blue-green planet Telnoch. Anakin
looked over at his padawan, who was sitting in the co-pilot’s chair holding Sam, the last
youngling to be taken home, so he could see out the viewscreen.
“Would you like to handle the landing?” he asked, not disappointed by the immediate
sparkle in Kuniren’s eyes. But the boy’s insecurity quickly supplanted his pleasure.
“Are you sure?” he asked hesitantly.
“I wouldn’t have asked you otherwise,” Anakin pointed out. “You always got high marks
on your simulator training and you’ve helped me land the last two times. You’re perfectly capable
of handling this thing on your own.” He didn’t add that Sam’s home was a good place for a first
solo landing, as it was open farmland with no tall buildings or heavy repulsorlift traffic nearby; he
simply stood and scooped Sam from Kuniren’s lap so they could change places.
“Do you want to watch the landing?” he asked Sam. The youngster nodded vigorously, his
eyes not leaving the viewscreen for a moment. Anakin sat down in the co-pilot’s chair with him
and watched Kuniren begin his pre-descent check.

The touchdown was smooth and flawless; Anakin felt the boy’s pride swell for a moment,
until it was suddenly obliterated in an attack of guilt. He knew the source: the Jedi training that
forbade any kind of pride in one’s achievements. Necessary enough, he thought, for some, but for
a child like Kuniren, such a blanket instruction only made his insecurity worse.
“Did I forget to do something?” the boy asked him, apparently sensing his displeasure with
the old Jedi training, though from Kuniren’s point of view, it was merely displeasure; of what, he
had no idea. Anakin needed to remember to watch his own thoughts; his apprentice could read his
feelings, not his mind.
“No,” he replied quickly. “I was thinking of something else. You did a wonderful job.”
Deliberately, he let Kuniren feel the truth of his statement as he looked the boy in the eye. “See? I
knew you could do it.”
He felt his padawan relax, though the boy kept a tight rein on his self-satisfaction. He was
simply happy to have pleased his master. It bothered Anakin that the boy felt this much control
was necessary; there was a difference, in his mind, between being smug and being satisfied with
one’s performance. But he forced himself not to dwell on it, reciting a Jedi meditation verse in his
mind, lest his apprentice pick up on his negativity:
My thoughts are serene and my feelings peaceful ...
He stared out the viewscreen at a fruit orchard in bloom in the near distance, set beside a
white farmhouse with a shady front porch. The pastoral scene was peaceful; he almost envied Sam
his childhood in such a place.
Kuniren glanced at him and released the boarding ramp. Anakin sighed, and turned to the
boy in his lap.
“Sam,” he said, “This is it - that’s your home.”
The little boy stared at it, his face expressionless. Anakin glanced up at Kuniren and saw
that his apprentice had noticed the same thing he did: Sam did not remember ever being there.
“You remember what I told you?” he pressed on, touching the boy’s cheek to get his
attention.
Sam nodded.
“What did I say?”
“I can come back an’ be a Jedi when I grow up,” Sam recited.
“Only if you want to,” Anakin added.
Sam stared at him; Anakin guessed what he was thinking: Why wouldn’t I want to? But as
he got older, he might think differently.
“Let’s go, then,” he said, setting the boy on the deck, before he stood and took his hand.

Lasri had seen the ship land from an upstairs window, and had watched as the boarding
ramp was lowered. She’d imagined the moment every day for the past two weeks, since the Jedi
temple had notified her they were bringing her son back for her to raise. In her imagination, she’d
run outside the moment the ship was visible in the atmosphere, waiting. But now that it was really
here, she was almost afraid to meet it.
It had been over a year since they’d taken Sam to live on Coruscant, with her blessing, and
the blessing of his father. He’d had a special gift; it hadn’t taken a Jedi blood test for them to
know that, and they had been happy he could use it in his life, to serve the republic. But it had
nevertheless hurt so terribly to have him gone; to know she could never see him again. It was that
which frightened her now - he’d been so young at the time, would he even know who she was?
A movement on the ramp caught her attention; they were disembarking. She should be
there to meet them; it was going to look bad if she weren’t - the man who’d called had made it
clear that if she didn’t want Sam back, he would still have a home at the temple. Of course she
had wanted him back (what a silly question!), but if she didn’t meet him, would they believe it?
Still, it took forever to unstick her feet from the floor, so that she ended up flying downstairs in
what seemed a single jump, to hurry and throw the front door open before they knocked on it.
They had just made it to the bottom of the porch when she got there, her Sam and a tall man in
black robes holding his hand. She didn’t bother even looking at the man’s face; she couldn’t tear
her eyes away from Sam, he’d gotten so big. He’d been looking down at the bottom step, but
looked up as she appeared, and she waited, her heart in her throat, while he stared at her long and
hard. Then he smiled. Tears sprang to her eyes as her son let go of the man’s hand and ran to her.
She scooped him up, hugging him, feeling the slight weight of him in her arms, his head pressed to
her neck, her heart comforted as it hadn’t been in a long time; she drank it in.
It was impossible for her to say how long she stood like that, her eyes closed in silent
prayer, when she felt Sam twist in her arms. He was staring back out at the man who’d brought
him, and who had, by now, nearly reached his ship. Sam pushed away and she put him down. He
ran out to the man, who turned to him without being called, and dropped to the boy’s level. Lasri
followed hesitantly, almost afraid her son had changed his mind, especially when she saw him
embrace the man tightly. They exchanged a few quiet words; Sam listened intently to what the
man - who looked somewhat familiar - said. Once her son glanced back at her; it was the
expression on his face that allayed her fears about losing him again, more than anything. Instead,
she felt reassured that the Jedi had truly cared for her son while he was away.
Their conversation didn’t last long. With a last nod at the man, Sam walked back over to
her calmly and took her hand. The man stood up, smiled, nodded to her politely, and walked the
short distance back to his ship. Lasri stood there with her mouth open as it took off. Anakin
Skywalker, the hero of the galaxy, had brought her son home to her, and she hadn’t even
recognized him until he was leaving - he was so young, and she’d thought surely he must be at
least thirty! She remained dumbfounded until the ship disappeared into the distance. But when it
was gone, a tug at her hand brought her thoughts back to what really mattered.

[crystalcat]

Chapter 23

“Is he going to be my little brother?” Kuniren asked as he effortlessly took the ship out of
the atmosphere. Anakin had told him to ‘go ahead and fly us all the way home’ as soon as he’d
come back on board. The boy’s insight astounded him, erroneous as his conclusion was, given
how the Jedi order was evolving.
“He might have been,” Anakin admitted, not hiding the fact that his padawan had correctly
interpreted the emotions involved in Sam’s departure before he had himself. “Except that with the
order changing, Sam won’t be returning until he’s at least eighteen. Beginning training at that age
will be a lot different; your class and the next one will be the last ones trained in the old order.”
He sat down in the back of the ship, determined to stay there until Kuniren completed the jump to
lightspeed. He’d done it several times already under Anakin’s supervision; now it was time to let
him have a little independence. Anakin leaned back and closed his eyes.
The mission was over, or it would be as soon as they returned to Coruscant. They’d only
been away for a week and it already seemed like a year to him, though he was glad Kuniren had
gotten the experience and the time with him before his master had to go away for several months.
Anakin frowned. He and Padme were leaving for Naboo as soon as he got back. He’d spoken to
her last night (they’d talked every night of the mission), and she had already made arrangements
with the moving company to pack all of their - well, her - personal belongings (Anakin still didn’t
really own anything). By the time he got there, the apartment would be stripped down to the bare
furniture, though she’d assured him they’d still be able to spend one last night in it before leaving
themselves the following morning. The problem was, he hadn’t yet completely made up his mind
what to do about Kuniren while they were gone.
Padme wanted him to bring Kuniren along with them. Her reasoning was that the Jedi
were beginning to mainstream their initiates, and what better way to give Anakin’s padawan that
benefit than by having him live with them all the time. She’d pointed out that they weren’t even
going to the Lake Country as they’d originally planned, since there was no longer any need to
hide and she’d need to stay close to civilization to coordinate her new orphan agency. They’d be
living in Theed, near her parents and sister, and Kuniren could easily be enrolled in a free school
there to keep up on his academic subjects (as he would be if he remained on Coruscant).
Anakin thought she made the prospect sound ideal, but he was still hesitant. He’d be taking the
boy away from his friends at the temple, and although he might be living with them as part of their
family, Anakin wasn’t sure he’d be able to spend sufficient time with him. His apprentice was so
sensitive, he might take the lack of attention the wrong way; he didn’t want to risk making his
padawan’s insecurity worse than it already was. Yet he knew he ran the risk of having Kuniren
feel abandoned if he left him at the temple by himself. He sighed. Obviously the boy had been
meant to be his apprentice; he didn’t regret taking him as one at all, but the path he should take
now regarding him was patently unclear.
At the thought of the unclearness of his path, he heard in his mind the voices of others:
Obiwan’s, Qui-Gon’s and Master Yoda’s, all reciting the same phrase, “Listen to the Force.”
Haven’t I been? he asked himself, and realized the inherent problem: It was usually so easy
for him to feel the Force, that he’d neglected the discipline necessary for those times when
listening to it took effort. He took a deep, calming breath, and willed himself to not think about
anything. It didn’t work; his mind wanted to think about something. He’d need to think about
something else instead. Padme? No, if he thought of her, he wouldn’t stop, and his quandary
might never be solved. Master Yoda would make a better focal subject, he thought. Once
decided, the answer wasn’t long in coming.
The diminutive elder was seated in his meditation chamber, light from the window
directed through slatted blinds into lines on the carpet near his hassock. As Anakin watched, the
ancient Jedi’s eyes opened, regarding him. “Have the boy the decision make,” he said before he
closed his eyes once again.
Of course! The simplicity of the solution astounded Anakin. How could he have not
thought of this? After all, hadn’t there been many times he’d wished Obiwan had asked him for his
input on the activities planned around him? Guiltily he thought he now understood why his master
had not asked, and the answer had nothing to do with the lack of trust Palpatine had told him it
had. Obiwan had simply been so wrapped up in trying to make the right decision that asking
hadn’t occurred to him, nothing more. Another eradication, he thought, mentally crossing
off another bit of programming the Sith lord had planted in him that he hadn’t consciously been
aware of until now, trying, with effort, to do it without self-recrimination. Help came from an
unexpected source - the sudden realization that he was behaving like his padawan; being overly
sensitive to circumstances beyond his present control. He opened his eyes and glanced at the back
of his apprentice’s head, just visible to him over the half-wall of his bunk. Obiwan had been right;
he would learn from his padawan as much as the boy would learn from him.
As he watched, Kuniren unbuckled himself and walked back to him; the ship had gone into
hyperspace several minutes ago; at the time, Anakin had been subliminally aware of the change in
the sound of the engines.
“I’m not interrupting your meditation, am I?” the boy asked. “I thought maybe you were
finished, but ...”
“No, you’re not interrupting me,” Anakin assured him. “In fact, I needed to talk to you
about something.”
He explained the situation as well as he could, providing what he felt were the pros and
cons of either choice, and even offering to consider other options, if Kuniren could think of any.
But when he finished, his apprentice did not even need time to think about his decision.
“I’d like to come with you,” he said. Anakin realized it was the choice he’d been hoping
for.

Padme squirmed in her seat. She was once again in the senatorial box of Naboo, this time
as an interested guest, as she awaited the pending legislation the Child Victims of War Trust,
which would fund her newly developing orphan placement agency. The Trust was not yet before
the senate, however, and she knew from many years experience that there was no guarantee it
would even come up today. She’d tried not to get her hopes up too high that it would pass before
she had to leave for Naboo, telling herself that passage was the important thing, not whether or
not she was personally present when it came up, though she couldn’t deny hoping she’d get to see
it through to the finish. But her restlessness was not entirely - or even mostly, she had to admit -
due to the sluggishness with which the legislature moved. She was simply uncomfortable.
Not that there was much she could do about it - in the past month it seemed to her as if she’d
more than doubled in size, though the med-droid she went to denied it, telling her everything was
perfectly fine and that her size was exactly right for her schedule. Nevertheless, she was
undeniably big, so big, she knew there was no way she would ever have fooled herself into
thinking she could conceal this size pregnancy unless she hid herself completely away and saw no
one. Her enormous stomach strained at her clothes (the same clothes that had been made to
“hide” that stomach), and she could now only walk in an ungainly waddle. She found it
incomprehensible that she could possibly get any bigger, though she knew she must, as she still
had another month to go before her due date. It was not something she looked forward to, as she
could only imagine that by then the only way she’d be able to get around would be by hover-chair.
She just wanted it all to be over.
She shifted her weight in the chair again, restlessly. It didn’t help that she didn’t feel
entirely well today; evidently she’d eaten something that hadn’t completely agreed with her. Not
that she felt sick, just ... uncomfortable ... and incapable of sitting still for hours.
The baby bumped inside her; she saw the movement reflected through her thinly stretched
skin and the fabric of her dress. Instinctively, her hand went to it, feeling another kick, before she
looked up from the blob of her shapeless body to the man in the pod across from her, the new
senator from Naboo, Trephane, whom she had once had such a crush on as a child, though,
looking at him now, she couldn’t remember why. Oh, he was attractive enough, with his curly
dark hair and midnight bedroom eyes, neat as a pin in spotlessly crisp clothes, which he wore with
elan. There was plenty there to make most women swoon even without the soft, breathy, cultured
voice or the slight etherealness he sometimes projected, courtesy of his previous life as an artist.
Most women would find no fault whatsoever with this classical example of male perfection. But
she did. His perfectly groomed hair was not golden and messy, his limpid dark eyes not bright
blue and direct, his carefully studied wardrobe was not thrown on at the last minute in the dark,
and his liquid voice did not catch on snags in his throat at odd moments. He was not her Anakin.
And though she’d once thought studying art to be the height of romance, it was Anakin alone
who filled her thoughts, her imagination, and her heart - even though any attempt to envision him
as an artist brought only the mental image of her man wielding an arc-welder with a wild look in
his eyes.
She smiled, stifling the urge to laugh aloud at the thought, then grimaced with the need to
shift her weight again. Her eyes stopped as they passed the luminous readout of the pod’s clock,
and a sudden, awful dread filled her. The indigestion she’d thought she was experiencing came
and went. Had it been happening in measured intervals?
Forcing herself to breathe normally, she stared at the clock until the numbers seemed
burned into her retina. Five minutes later, the pain came again, though she told herself it didn’t
mean anything unless the next one did too. Seconds crawled by. The time passed. She was almost
convinced it wasn’t going to happen again when she felt it build up, peak, and then relax away.
She was in premature labor. And Anakin wasn’t home.

A sharp, red peak of flame pierced the stillness of Anakin’s meditation, drawing his
attention. He concentrated on it, curiously, though still remote, focused. Familiarity enveloped
him as he drew nearer to its source, a wellspring; the root of his stability - love, companionship,
shared life; Padme. He melted into the feeling of her soothing presence ...
And jumped immediately to his feet, almost tripping over himself in the process.
She’s in labor! he thought, panic-stricken. And I’m not there with her!
He ran to the cockpit, his eyes scanning the chronometer - thirty minutes until they
reached the jump point to come out of hyperspace outside of Coruscant. From there, it would
probably be another hour until he could get to her.
With great effort, he forced himself to be logical. Babies took a long time to come, he
knew; an hour and a half was not much in comparison. But he couldn’t eradicate entirely the
image of her that had been burned into his brain so long ago - the one of her dying with Obiwan
by her side and himself nowhere around - even though he knew, rationally, that he’d had another
vision since - one in which he was present at his children’s birth and Padme survived, healthy.
He sat down in the pilot’s seat, thinking. Kuniren had been elated when Anakin had told him he
could take the ship all the way down to its berthing deck. He hated to disappoint the boy, but it
would be best all around if he did it himself now, given the circumstances. Although the time he
would save doing it himself would likely only be marginal, he was too worked up to properly keep
his own emotions in check, and his impatience would put more pressure on his apprentice than he
thought he should. He’d have to make it up to his padawan later.
As if responding to the thought of his name, Kuniren appeared in the cockpit, rubbing his
eyes, his hair still mussed from lying in his bunk. Yet his first thought was concern for his master;
Anakin knew he must have been projecting panic at full volume, and probably still was.
“What’s wrong?” the boy asked. “Has something happened?”
Anakin swallowed.
“No, nothing bad,” he assured his apprentice. “Just ... Padme is in labor.”
Kuniren’s eyes grew wide.
“It takes a long time to have a baby, though,” Anakin added, as much to reassure himself
as anything. “I’m sure we’ll get there in time.”
He knew the doubt he had about it, irrational as it was, would be felt by the boy regardless
of his words, but he couldn’t block it out.
“You want to pilot the ship down,” Kuniren said, leaving Anakin almost dumbfounded at
his insight.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I know you were looking forward to doing it.”
“It’s okay.”
“I’ll think of something to make it up to you.”
As they entered the atmosphere, he finally came up with the plan.
“I’ve figured it out,” he said. “I’m going to land at the rotunda. You take the ship back to
the temple from there and let Master Kenobi and Master Yoda know what’s happened. Will that
work?”
“By myself?” In his voice Anakin heard both disbelief and eagerness.
“Yes, of course by yourself,” he assured him. “And if anyone says anything to you about
it, you tell them I said it was okay. All right?”
“Okay,” the boy replied. Anakin could tell he was still doubtful, and to be honest, he
didn’t blame him. He could just imagine someone scolding him regardless of what he said.
“I mean it,” he insisted. “If they have a problem, you tell them it’s my fault and that I
insisted you do it.”
It still did not serve, even though the boy nodded, but he’d just have to handle any
problem that came up later. The rotunda landing deck was right beneath them. Anakin was out of
the pilot’s seat almost before the ship had completely settled.
“Here you go,” he said. “Remember what I said. Oh, and you are welcome to come with
them to the hospital if they come, or by yourself, if they don’t, if you want, but I’ll warn you it’ll
probably take a long time.”
By the time he finished the sentence he was already out of the hatch, thinking it might be a
very long time indeed if she was still at the rotunda now.

Another contraction came and went and still she sat in the pod, though she knew her
presence was completely irrelevant; there was no way she could concentrate on anything but the
impending arrival of her child - she had no idea what was being discussed or debated, and only the
vaguest notion that it wasn’t yet her Trust, since Senator Trephane had (fortunately) paid not the
slightest attention to her. Part of her screamed that she should get up and see a medical droid
immediately, but she’d hung on to her denial, thinking that if she just waited long enough, it
would turn out to be false labor or something else equally benign. And she had no desire to cause
any kind of scene by rushing to the hospital for no good reason, not with the fishbowl life she’d
been leading since Anakin had gotten out of the hospital. The volume of newscams had slowly
decreased; no need to ramp them all up again.
You don’t think giving birth in the pod will cause a scene? she asked herself sternly
as the length between contractions slowly shortened: four minutes, fifteen to thirty seconds and
decreasing. The pains weren’t getting any lighter either. Stoically, she weathered one more, then
made her decision.
“Excuse me,” she whispered as she rose to leave, as if she were simply going to the ladies’
room. Maybe that’s all she would do; maybe walking around would take care of the problem.
Maybe I’ll grow wings and fly.
As she waddled out onto the concourse, she felt immediately better for finally taking some
action. Of course she could not simply go hide in the bathroom; she needed to get herself to the
hospital - what difference did it make how many newscams followed her? She’d rather be
embarrassed than have anything happen to her baby! What had she been thinking? Decisively, she
took the quickest route to the public transports, stopping just short of a junction when she heard
the sound of running feet approaching.
The man nearly passed her before he managed to stop. She stared at him in disbelief, then
cried, “Anakin!” and threw herself into his arms.
“Padme!” he exclaimed, and she didn’t miss the urgency in his voice. “Padme, what are
you still doing here?”
She pulled back and looked up at him.
“You know?”
“Yes, I felt it ... well,” he amended, “I felt that you felt it ... I mean ...”
She laughed, then remembered that what she was feeling was not a good thing.
“It’s too early,” she said, then stiffened as another contraction hit her.
He held her through it, then took her face in one hand.
“It’s all right,” he said.
“No, it isn’t,” she protested. “It’s ...”
“It’s all right,” he insisted.
She wanted to believe him but couldn’t see how. It was a month too early for this. Guilt
rose in her at how she’d just been wishing it was over. I didn’t mean it, she thought helplessly.
“Let’s go to the hospital,” her husband said sensibly.
She turned to go, but with the movement, heard a sudden popping sound and a gush of
warm water soaked her legs. Gasping, she froze in place, terrified.
“What’s the matter?” Anakin asked, the edge of panic starting in his voice.
“My water broke,” she managed to say, realizing that her long heavy dress still hid the
evidence.
“Can you still walk?” he asked.
“Yes ...” she began, then amended it to, “I don’t know.” The baby had shifted inside her; it
felt ... different.
“Do you want me to carry you?”
“No,” she said, then, “Yes ... no ...”
He scooped her up and strode away.

[crystalcat]

Chapter 24

Obiwan opened his eyes, surprised to see daylight streaming in through the high,
clerestory windows in a private waiting area of the hospital. Beside him Anakin’s padawan lay
curled on the couch, still sleeping. The room was perfectly still; no one was about.
The babies still haven’t come? he wondered, though he knew they must not have; the med-
droid he’d spoken to had assured him it he would be notified of the birth immediately. But,
looking around in the quiet, he wondered what it was that had interrupted his meditation.
Focusing in the Force, he reached out tentatively for his brother: anxiety, weariness,
anticipation ... No, his children were not yet here. What then?
Approaching footsteps answered his question; someone had come to see him - or, more
likely - to ask about the baby. He sat up straight, his attention on the doorway, which was soon
filled with the large form of the recently elected (no longer ‘acting’) Chancellor Bail Organa.
“Any news yet?” the man asked. Though he spoke quietly, his resonant baritone awakened
Kuniren, who sat up, rubbing his eyes. “My apologies,” the chancellor added, “I didn’t mean to
wake you.”
“No,” Obiwan said, answering the chancellor’s question. “Nothing yet.”
Organa nodded, glancing perfunctorily around the room before returning his attention to Obiwan.
“Do you suppose they’ll be able to give an estimate if I find someone to ask?” he inquired.
“I don’t know,” Obiwan replied. “But you can go on in the delivery room if you want. We
were in there for several hours last night.” He didn’t add that they’d left when it had become
obvious Anakin and Padme both seemed to have forgotten they were even there. But the
chancellor made no move to do as Obiwan had suggested. Instead he frowned, as if deep in
thought.
“Is something wrong?” Obiwan asked him.
It took him a moment, as if he were hesitant to speak, and he gave a long sigh before
answering, “When Master Yoda and I picked Anakin up in space the night Palpatine was killed,
he mentioned how worried he was that his wife might have a ... a difficult delivery. I suppose I’m
concerned to know if she is ... will be ... all right.”
“Well,” Obiwan began, “She was very concerned to begin with that she went into labor a
month early, but I think the med-droids managed to convince her that the babies won’t suffer any
complications from it.”
“Ah,” Organa said, trying to sound pleased, but it was clear to Obiwan that he had not
really answered the man’s question. Was there something else - something Anakin might have
once told him? The nightmare of himself killing Padme, yes, but that had nothing to do with the
birth, and in any case, would only have transpired had Anakin turned to the dark side. He couldn’t
call to mind anything else.
His thoughts were interrupted by young Kuniren, who began to gasp for air as if he had
run a marathon. “She’s ... she’s ... tired ... so tired,” he panted, his eyes not focused on anything
in the room. “So tired ...” he repeated.
“Kuniren?” he said sharply, trying deliberately to divert the boy’s attention as he took him
gently by the arm. He was relieved when the padawan blinked and looked up at him. “You were
able to reach Lady Amidala?”
The boy looked abruptly away.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“No, no, don’t be sorry about it,” Obiwan told him, surprised by his reaction. “I just
wasn’t aware that it could be done.”
Anakin’s apprentice looked up at him hopefully and then over at the chancellor.
“She seems all right, sir, except that she’s very tired and wants to go to sleep but she
can’t,” he reported. “She isn’t worried about anything ... except how long it’s taking.”
The chancellor nodded and smiled as if the boy’s information managed to satisfy him. “I
understand,” he said, finally coming fully into the room and sitting down. He looked directly at
Obiwan. “I was hoping I could take the news of the birth back to the senate by this afternoon,” he
said. “The legislation Padme was waiting on never came up yesterday. I thought ... I thought that
the announcement that her children had been born might help it pass today.”
“You want to stack the vote in her favor,” Obiwan observed.
“Yes,” Organa replied bluntly. “There are advantages to being chancellor. I no longer get
a direct vote, but I can influence the outcome I prefer to a certain extent. I happen to believe that
the Trust Naboo is sponsoring is an excellent way to begin redressing the problems brought about
by the war.” He sighed. “Whether it passes or not, my wife and I intend to adopt.”
The fairy-tale image, created in Obiwan’s mind, of an adopted war orphan becoming the
heir to the ruling house of Alderaan was interrupted by the arrival of his own padawan, Lige,
accompanied by Master Yoda.
“About to arrive, Skywalker’s children are,” the old master informed them, answering
Obiwan’s unasked question. Master Yoda had declined to accompany them to the hospital the
evening before, saying it would be a long wait and there would be time enough in the morning.
Still, Obiwan had wanted to be there with his friend, and Kuniren with his master.

Anakin forced himself to concentrate on the health beneath his wife’s exhaustion, though
the longer her labor lasted, the more difficult it became to keep the old image of his original
nightmare at bay. She had gone from frantic terror when they’d arrived and the med-droids had
told her they could not stop her labor, to happy anticipation when they’d managed to convince her
the ‘baby’ would be healthy regardless, to aggravation that it was taking so long, to irritation with
the droids, to exhaustion, until now she seemed barely able to respond even to the contractions
that wracked her body in seemingly continuous waves. Her eyes were closed; she no longer
replied or even seemed to react to his attention. He told himself she was simply conserving what
little strength she had left (and hadn’t he done the same himself often enough during the war,
waiting on some distant outpost for an enemy that might or might not come?) but the old fear
refused to leave him entirely. It didn’t help that he felt completely helpless (regardless of Padme’s
insistence that she needed him there).
Focus, he told himself. He needed to focus on what the med-droids had said all the
times he’d asked: that everything was proceeding normally. But his attempt to do this was
interrupted when his wife suddenly grasped him by the arm and cried out with the effort as she
bore down. A bit belatedly, the delivery droid told her to ‘push now.’ She gasped once, to fill her
lungs and heave again. This process repeated several times more, until finally her cry ended on a
piercing note that told him she’d felt real pain. He could feel her whole body trembling, and she
hesitated a moment before bearing down one last time.
The baby cried out, protesting the shock of birth, of inflating his lungs for the first time
and of being blinded by the bright lights. Anakin stared in wonder at his new son as the delivery
droid clamped and cut the umbilical cord, then held him out. Reverently, he took the baby,
holding him close, instinctively comforting him with his mind. The crying stopped, and he stared
into the tiny face.
In his mind’s eye he saw him again, grown to manhood, standing straight and true against
Palpatine’s evil, willing to sacrifice himself for his faith in his fallen father’s goodness; his arms
holding him in sadness and grief as he died. A tear fell, splashing onto the baby’s nose and rolling
down onto his fat cheek by his tightly closed eyes.
“Anakin ...” he heard his wife’s dried, broken voice whisper tiredly. He held the baby
down for her to see. “Hello, Luke,” she croaked, brushing his hairless head with the back of her
hand and reaching for him.
But Anakin couldn’t let her hold him just quite yet.

Padme looked up at her husband in confusion, for the moment too exhausted to argue. He
had the oddest expression, she thought, almost ... apologetic? Her overtired brain fought to make
sense of it as he leaned forward over her.
“You’re not finished,” he said, and she became even more bewildered. He owed her an
explanation, and tired or not, she intended to ask for it. But before she could form the words to
ask, she felt something shift and move deep inside her, and the onset of another contraction.
“What ..?” she gasped, her eyes wide before the instinct to push once again overtook her.
Rationally, she knew it must be another baby, but her mind refused to accept the reality. Surely,
she thought through the fog of labor, there was another explanation; it was something else, it had
to be. Confusion and disbelief, mixed with anger that her labor was not over, filled her; her eyes
brimmed with hot tears. And then, almost immediately, she felt the baby slide free, an easier and
less painful birth than the first, and heard her give a weak cry.
“It’s a girl,” her husband murmured as the med-droid brought her daughter up where she
could see and Padme burst into tears, sobbing wildly, drained, and weak with emotion.

Fear and trepidation struck Anakin twice in rapid succession. Leia’s cry was so much less
than her brother’s had been, but worse than that, he could sense through the Force that something
seemed wrong with her. Yet before he could focus on what it was, Padme appeared to collapse in
front of him, reminding him disturbingly of his dream. For a moment, he stood there, helplessly
holding his son in his arms, watching, his panic building, until Luke screamed.
He looked down at the baby he held, feeling the power of the Force run through him.
He’d known the boy had it; taken that for granted after the vision of his dream. Until now, he
hadn’t paid much attention to it, though he’d used the boy’s Force-sensitivity without even
thinking to calm him before. Desperately, he called on all the willpower he had to conquer his
own fear, surprised to discover that as he brought his panic under control, Luke’s cries
diminished. He’s reacting to my fear, he thought in wonder. Always before, he believed, his
fears had affected only himself, crippling him and keeping him from reaching his full potential. He
had accepted the inevitability of this; he’d never been the Jedi he should have been, never come up
to the standard - he deserved to live in fear. But Luke doesn’t deserve it, he thought, and
with an inner resolve he’d never known he had, finally, at long last, Anakin gave his will up to the
Force.
The baby stopped crying as he’d known he would, and he glanced up at his wife, unafraid.
She looked back at him, shivering and still sobbing, though now silently. But she was not dying,
just overcome with emotion, and now he saw clearly the images in his second dream, the one
where his family survived in happiness. He handed Luke to her and she took him eagerly, smiling
through her tears. Then, with resolve, he turned his attention to his daughter.
She was so tiny, he thought as he took her from the med-droid, her body disturbingly
limp. If she were Force-sensitive, he could not immediately tell, as he had with her brother. But
holding her close, he opened his mind to her anyway.
The thread of her Force-sensitivity ran deep, into the vastness of the universe, woven into the Force, connecting all that was familiar to her. And though she did not yet have names for them herself, her father understood them, and recognized the steady companionship of her brother, the constant, soothing presence of her mother, and his own presence, beloved by her mother, and felt by her before birth through the Force. She had bound herself so tightly to these that she had been born twice - once in her brother’s experience and the second time in her own. She had experienced both her mother’s seventeen hour labor and her father’s terrible fear of loss. And now, she lay in Anakin’s arms completely exhausted, sound asleep. He rocked her gently, sending feelings of his love and
quiet harmony to her, where they would filter into her dreams, and so not disturb her sleep.

[crystalcat]

Chapter 25

Kuniren stared at his room in the Jedi temple for what he wondered would be the last
time. He was ready to go; being a Jedi, he owned nothing of his own, so there was nothing for
him to pack. He was simply waiting. He could have gone out to a common room to say good-bye
to everyone, but he didn’t feel like it. He hadn’t really felt like doing much for the past two days -
ever since Master Skywalker’s children had been born.
No, that wasn’t entirely right, he told himself. If he were honest, he hadn’t felt like doing
much ever since the girl had been born (even though there was only about a five minute difference
in their birth times). But her arrival had been the one to make him think - to make him wonder
about himself.
He’d been elated when he’d first felt her come into the world - felt them both. The
sensation was so recognizable as the opposite of what he’d felt when the temple had been
attacked that it had been impossible not to feel joy. But he’d also felt the immediate spike of fear
from their father which centered on how the girl perceived the Force. And even after his master
had conquered that fear, he’d remained concerned, all the way up until the last time Kuniren had
seen him, yesterday evening, when he’d left the temple, saying he would return today to collect
him for their journey to Naboo.
His master had been here the day before, to ask Master Yoda many questions, all of them
about the girl. Kuniren had been with him the whole time; nothing was kept secret, but the more
time he had to think about it, the questions Master Skywalker had asked bothered him. Some
questions were, of course, simply odd, such as when he’d asked what would have happened to
Leia’s Force-sense if her mother had died at birth, her father had turned to the dark side, and she
and her brother had been taken to separate planets to be raised. The old master had, of course,
replied, that there was no way to tell; several possibilities suggested themselves. The most
obvious, according to him, was that she might likely have died of shock. Alternatively, he said,
she might have lost her mind, or if she were very strong-minded, simply shut that part of herself
down in reaction to the pain. He thought it extremely unlikely that she could have come through
such a birth unscarred (though he kindly added that if her father had turned to the dark side,
appearing to have no Force-sense would serve her well as protection from him). Master
Skywalker had nodded, and Master Yoda, as he was in the habit of doing, naturally asked why
he’d wanted to know. To which his master had replied that if a possible answer could have been
‘nothing would have happened,’ he would have had someone to ask for help with her. They then
began talking about his need for help, which was the part that bothered Kuniren. It bothered him
because he knew that Leia Skywalker’s Force-gift was the same as his own. And if Master
Skywalker, who was the most powerful Jedi living needed help with a baby like him, how would
his own parents have possibly coped?
The problem was, this provided the logical answer to a question he’d long asked himself.
Though he no longer had any physical memory of his parents, what he did have were the emotions
associated with his leaving them - courtesy of his Force-gift. And though it seemed to him that
they’d been sad about his leaving, he knew they’d felt a great sense of relief, as well. Relief, he
thought, to be rid of someone so difficult; a baby who would tune into someone’s passing mood
and assume it as his own.
Kuniren was so far into his own thoughts that he failed to notice a presence at his door
until the visitor knocked. He jumped, startled, and before he could say, ‘come in,’ the door slid
aside to reveal his master standing there, a grave expression on his face.
“Aren’t you coming?” he asked softly. “I thought you would be downstairs already.”
He glanced up at him, then away.
“I don’t have to come,” he managed to make himself say.
He heard his master sigh, then felt him kneel down beside him and clasp him by the
shoulder. The man started to speak, stopped, was silent a moment, and then finally said, “Well, if
you choose not to, I think you owe me an explanation. Don’t you?”
Put that way, he had to admit his master was right. He’d waited till the last minute to
make the offer. Even though his master would be better off without him, he needed to know it
wasn’t a child’s whim. Except that he could think of no way to put it that would not end up
insulting Leia.
“I’d just be in your way,” he tried saying, though he knew that was lame. So lame, he
could almost anticipate the response: In your way how?
But his master didn’t say that. Instead, he took him by both shoulders and said, “Is that
what you felt when you looked at my feelings about it?”
Kuniren was silent. He hadn’t actually sought out his master’s feelings; it would have left
him too broken-hearted to know for a fact that he was unwanted.
“I know full well you didn’t,” Master Skywalker told him. “So do it now. That’s an order,
padawan.”
Kuniren looked up at him, hoping for a reprieve, but he met only the fierce stare of his
master. His eyes seemed to look right down into his soul, and he was reminded of his first contact
with him, and how it had felt as if he were something slightly more than human. Reluctantly, he
reached out, braced for what he knew must be coming ...
And met only his master’s love for him. The shock brought tears to his eyes. He blinked
and looked away, embarrassed.
“What made you think you were unwanted?” His voice was quiet, but it was evident that if
it was a person who’d made him feel that way, that person would be very sorry indeed.
“Yesterday,” he mumbled. “When you were talking to Master Yoda.”
His master was silent for a long while. Kuniren finally chanced a glimpse of his face out of
the corner of his eye - he was chewing on his lower lip, his brow furrowed, lost in thought. But he
glanced up before Kuniren could look away.
“About my daughter,” he said. Kuniren stared at the floor. His master sighed again. “I
could try to guess your reasons, but I might be wrong. It would be better if you just told me.”
Slowly, hesitantly, Kuniren did, beginning with the difficulty his master had described to
Master Yoda and ending with his own conclusion about his parents. When he finished, his master
closed his eyes in pain.
“I don’t know your parents,” he said softly. “So I can’t tell you that you’re definitely
wrong about what you felt. I can tell you that your conclusion about their relief isn’t the
only possible one - they could easily have been relieved that you could be trained by someone who
understood your talent, for instance.
“But I do know about me,” he continued. “And it isn’t just that I want you to come.
Before the babies came, that might have been all it was, but now, I really need you, because I
think Leia needs you. She needs someone who can show her how to separate others’ feelings
from her own. I think you can do that, if you’re willing. Are you?”
Kuniren was so stunned he was unable to say anything. It was definitely something he
could do; why hadn’t he thought of it himself instead of wallowing in self-pity? There was no
age-threshold for that kind of learning. He felt his cheeks flame with embarrassment.
“Of course, you won’t have to spend all your time training a baby,” his master went on,
ignoring his discomfort. “Master Yoda has given us an assignment to work on while we’re there.”
He paused a moment for impact, then said, “We’re to trace Palpatine’s origins to see if we can
find where he started his study of the Force.”
The boy couldn’t believe it - a real assignment, possibly even a dangerous one. And a
family, one he’d truly been invited into - one where he was wanted. He wasn’t sure about his
master’s interpretation of his old family’s relief, but it seemed to matter much less now. Still
unable to speak, he gave his master a hug, which was happily returned. Then they left his room,
and he didn’t look back.

Master Kenobi and his friend (and Master Kenobi’s padawan) Lige rode with them to the
spaceport and saw them off. He found out there from Lige that the two of them had an
assignment as well - they were to make sure a superweapon found on the old chancellor’s
computer had never been built, or if it had, to make sure it was destroyed. After that, they were
actually going to join them on Naboo to help in their quest. So, though they all said goodbye, they
knew it was only for a short time. They boarded their ship, it blasted off, and Coruscant was left
far behind. Kuniren watched it recede into the blackness of space, then went to their cabin to join
his new family.

~*~*~

The life of the Chosen One continued, though the telling of this part of it is now over. He
remained a Jedi all his life, and his children did as well, though the code was much changed by
their day, and families were openly permitted. After a long time had passed and their
grandchildren grown, Padme Amidala finally passed on to become one with the Force. Her
husband’s empty clothes were found beside her body, the expression on her own face peaceful
and happy. Anakin was never seen again, and some say he lives still. Whether or not this is true,
he is the only Chosen One in history to survive his destiny and lead a full and satisfying life.