Vitrification

1.

The desert planet they land on is not Tatooine, but it has that familiar layer of grime and desperation that is all too common on Outer Rim worlds. The five of them land in the largest city of Er’Kit, a dusty trading port by the name of Kit’Awany, on a refugee vessel crammed full of non-human families on the run to escape the Core Worlds and the oppressive fist of the Empire.

The trip had been difficult. Luke caught some sort of mild digestive virus that left Padmé scrambling to find foods and nutrient pastes that his stomach would tolerate, while Obi-Wan was busy keeping Leia distracted and away from her brother until the worst of the illness had passed. Now that the twins were five standard years old, it was difficult to keep them separated for more than an hour at a time without one or both of them making a fuss. They had always been close, their Force sensitivity making it so that their moods were unerringly in sync, but as they had grown older and the makeshift family unit had traveled ever farther together, their bond had become tighter and ever more insular.

Anakin is the one who leads them down the gangplank, huddled amongst the other passengers. Obi-Wan takes the rear, watching their backs. Padmé keeps herself in a cluster with the children, one small hand in each of hers, looking like any of the other refugee mothers who they have shared space with during their many journeys. Anakin thinks she looks as beautiful as she ever has, a bright and shining light that he would know anywhere, but he’s grateful for the smears of sweat and dirt, the tangles in her hair, and the bags underneath her eyes, that make it easier for searching eyes to slide right over her.

The long fingers of the Empire have not reached this far, so there are no Stormtroopers waiting for them in Kit’Awany, no Star Destroyers circling in orbit about Er’Kit. Their absence is a relief. They can stay for some amount of time.

“How long, do you think?” Obi-Wan asks. His eyes dart over the buildings of the spaceport -- short, squat, identical things that have the cheap, industrial cast of the mass-produced housing that SoroSuub churns out for Outer Rim governments. Not so different from the other countless spaceports they’ve visited in the past. The familiarity of it is comforting in its own way.

“Few months, maybe even a year,” Anakin says to him, tucking his head close so that they won’t be overheard, but also because he missed being able to kiss Obi-Wan whenever he wants. There wasn’t really much room for it when they were all stacked up, three families in every set of quarters. He continues, “As long as we can get away with it.”

Eventually the Inquisitors will come. They always come.

The longer the five of them stay in one place, the more deeply their presence will reverberate through the Force, and they cannot risk that. One day, perhaps, when the bones of the nascent rebellion are strong enough, they will be able to find a more permanent place of safety. But for now, they travel from place to place, from planet to station to outpost. It’s not an easy life, but Anakin’s life has never been easy. At least in this one, he sees Padmé every morning and every night. He has the laughter of his children, and he has Obi-Wan’s quiet, steadying presence at his side. It may be less than everything he’s wanted, but it’s still more than he ever could have hoped for.

“We know they’re hunting the two of us in particular,” Obi-Wan points out, his tone mild, still with the undertone of one of his all-too-common lectures. “We can’t let ourselves become complacent.”

Anakin claps him on the shoulder as Padmé shoots the two of them an irritated look for dawdling on the bare stretch of shifting sands that counts as a spaceship landing pad here on Er’Kit. He says to Obi-Wan, “That’s what you’re here for,” and he laughs when Obi-Wan rolls his eyes.

---

Their time on Er’Kit lasts five months in total. It’s uneventful, for the most part, and Anakin’s memories of the planet are filled with a brightness and sweetness that his memories of Tatooine will never be able to match.

He hates the sand, of course, and the stifling heat and the harsh glare of the single sun. Water is expensive and difficult to come by in their quiet little town of Kit’Testanu, and there’s a local gang who tries to establish a monopoly by bullying the local moisture farmers and taking control of the supply lines. Padmé manages to convince them that it would be cheaper and easier to simply act as security for the farmers against raids from other towns, and Anakin somehow manages to fall ever more in love with her as he watches her talk rings around the gang leaders, the sharpness of her mind only barely hidden by the sweetness of her smile. Her case is only bolstered by a string of mysterious accidents that occur in the gang’s warehouses, leaving their water an easy mark for reclamation by the townsfolk.

After five years of practice, it’s becoming easier to disguise some of these things as pure happenstance. He’s had more than a few conversations with Bail about how a string of good luck can draw the attention of the Inquisitors faster than an openly carried lightsaber.

But Anakin’s favorite memory of Er’Kit will always be the time he walked out behind their dusty little house at sunset to find Obi-Wan with the twins. They were sitting in a circle, crosslegged on the sand, and he was teaching the two of them how to draw droplets of water out of the atmosphere using the Force. They took turns trying to fill a small bowl in the center of the circle with what they could produce. Leia was wearing a mulish look of concentration, and Luke had a furrowed brow, both of their small faces glowing orange in the dimming light.

He doesn’t remember what Obi-Wan was saying so much as the cadence of his voice, low and even and soothing. It reminded Anakin of mornings in the Temple creche, where Obi-Wan would sometimes teach the younglings their first lessons in how to meditate. And for as awkward as Anakin always felt around the younglings back then (since he hadn’t ever been like them and never would be), the sight of Obi-Wan teaching his children with that familiar patience and generosity gives Anakin an unsettling sort of homesickness, a desire to return to a place that had never really felt like home.

Anakin hadn’t meant to interrupt Obi-Wan’s lesson, intending to just linger and watch, but then Obi-Wan had looked up at him and smiled and said, “Do you want to show your father what you’ve learned?”

That was all the prompting the twins needed to swarm around him, both of them babbling about what Obi-Wan had taught them about air currents and rain, while Anakin tried to absorb everything they were saying. By the time the sun had finally set, Anakin had one soaked through sleeve and one very damp eyebrow, but his sides hurt from laughing, and Luke looked very smug as he stuck his tongue out at Leia. That night, Anakin made sure to show Obi-Wan just how thankful he was, and Obi-Wan returned the favor afterwards.

A week later, there’s news of Imperial activity in the system. That’s all the impetus any of them need. They pack up their things, and they go.

---

2.

The trees of Lowik grow tall and thick, and their branches and leaves form a thick canopy overhead so that the sunlight only filters through in dappled light and shadows. Often, the sight of so much greenery reminds Padmé with an aching bittersweetness of Naboo. So much of her adult life had been on Coruscant, serving in the Senate, when much of her childhood had been planetside, serving in the Palace in Theed.

She spends much of her time in the upper platforms, where the bustle of New Palsaang below gets swallowed up by songs of birds and the buzzing of insects, and when she closes her eyes, she can almost smell the freshly blooming millaflowers on the banks of the Solleu River back home.

Maasshyk, their wookiee host, will visit her from time to time up there, climbing up the highest reaches with Luke riding on one shoulder and Leia riding on the other. The two of them will talk and laugh together and share a cup of tea while the twins scamper up and down the rope bridges that connect the tree platforms. Now six, Leia has grown a few centimeters taller than Luke, and she uses it to lord over him. Bail sometimes tells Padmé that it’s because Leia is a ’natural leader,’ and he says it with a fond, if also a bit smug, smirk that still comes across clearly over the holoscreen.

The settlement of New Palsaang was established shortly before the Battle of Kashyyyk and the subsequent transformation of the Republic into the Empire. The residents were pacifists, mostly, conscientious objectors who did not want to be conscripted into the planetary government’s standing military. They left their home planet behind to establish a colony on Lowik in agreement with the native Lowikatut, who were tunnelers who fed on the rich nutrients that seeped into the soil. It is now the largest population of free wookiees in the galaxy, and they accepted five wayward humans into their clan without questions or complaints.

Today, Maasshyk lets out a warm, happy growl as they and Padmé chat. “Your cubs are growing bigger and stronger.”

Luke and Leia seem to be playing a version of tag with one of the younger wookiees, who is about the same level of development as the human children, but who still towers over them. The twins dart over the planks of the bridges with the same easy light and easy steps that their father has, a complete trust in their own small bodies that Padmé is still struggling to master. It’s times like this more than anything else that makes the name ‘Skywalker’ seem apt.

Padmé says, “They are thriving here.” To some degree the children have thrived everywhere, eager to learn and play in every new place they’ve visited, but in New Palsaang, they’ve seemed to flower, the brightest and the happiest Padmé has ever seen them.

“But you cannot stay,” Maasshyk says, the rumble of their voice understanding.

Padmé shakes her head. “We can’t be here when the Empire comes,” she says. It would put the entire clan at risk, and Padmé will not allow herself to be responsible for that.

Maasshyk makes a soft, trilling howl. “A tree without roots will die.” An old wookiee proverb.

“We are their roots,” Padmé says with conviction. She knows this in the way Anakin will sing to Leia off-key to help her sleep, and the way Luke likes to cling to Obi-Wan’s legs when he’s feeling tired or uncertain. “And we will find a way for them to put down more.”

Now that the initial chaos has passed and the political climate has settled into something of a steady state, she has begun to reach out to some of her old contacts, getting a sense for the shape of the coming rebellion. When the time is right, when the children are old enough and the rebellion is stable enough, Padmé knows she will join them in the fight. They all will.

Padmé has been a politician for nearly her entire life. She knows that the mechanics of change are slow and drawn out and tedious. Patience and persistence will be her most valuable skills for the battle ahead.

Maasshyk says, “I hope you are right, my friend.”

“I hope so, too,” Padmé agrees. It seems like such a far off dream, a galaxy where her children will no longer need to hide, where their gifts will no longer make them hunted.

In the distance, Leia lets out a joyous, high-pitched screech as Luke lunges forward to grab at the hem of her shirt. The wookiee cub who is playing with them barks out an answering howl of laughter.

---

That night, Anakin comes home flushed and happy and victorious from the hunt. They caught one of the large herbivorous land-creatures that resembled the Arrawtha-dyr native to Kashyyyk, and the beast had enough meat to feed the clan for a few days. Obi-Wan prefers to spend his days with the farmers, tending the groves where they grow laawisuu fruit. Padmé has visited him there while he’s been working, and it’s a beautiful sight. The clan has been carefully cultivating and breeding only the hardiest and most delicious genetic strains, and the grafted branches hang heavy with large, round yellow fruit. Padmé spends her time with the clan-mothers, who are responsible for allocating resources and resolving disputes, the kind of nitty gritty, detail-oriented work that Anakin doesn’t have the patience for and that Obi-Wan doesn’t have much interest in.

It has a tendency to leave her a little irritated most nights, cranky and on-edge from the all-too-routine personal squabbles that define every grouping of sentient beings. She knows this isn’t the only time she’s come to the dinner table in a bad mood.

But Anakin still takes one look at her while she’s setting the table, and his brow furrows. “What’s wrong?” he asks. “You feel… unsettled.”

Their home here matches the homes of all the clan members, a wooden shelter with several bedrooms and a common space for family members to eat and socialize. The food for the clan is prepared communally, so there’s nothing that quite resembles a kitchen. It’s a relief in many ways, because then she can avoid Obi-Wan’s cooking for the entire duration of their stay.

Padmé says, “I was just thinking about the future.” She glances over to where Obi-Wan is paying attention to Luke as he shows off the toy spaceship one of the clan’s craftsmen made for him. Leia is vibrating impatiently next to them, eager for her turn to tell Obi-Wan about the bird with glittering wings she saw earlier that day.

“Master Yoda would probably say something about how the future is always in motion,” Anakin says, and he almost sounds as comforting as he means to be.

Padmé wonders if her own parents felt like this, filled with the same clawing hope and terror warring inside them when they looked at her. She had met Anakin’s mother only briefly, but it had been during the most difficult and painful decision of the woman’s life, when she had decided to let Master Jinn and the Jedi take her only son away. Would Padmé be able to make that same decision?

She thinks of the lessons that Anakin and Obi-Wan have been teaching the twins, small things like how to hide themselves in the Force, how to run and trust that your feet will know the way, how to shove someone back and out of your space. She thinks of the few times she visited the Jedi Temple on Coruscant, high ceilings and ancient architecture, the gentle serenity and peace that permeated through every single room. And she’s selfishly glad that she will never be asked to make that choice.

Padmé says, “That’s because the future is what we make of it.” Her mother was a potter in the traditional Nabooian style. She would mold beautiful things out of inert lumps of clay and then fire them in a kiln until they were strong enough to hold their shape. Padmé has always thought of herself as her mother’s daughter.

The Old Republic has been burned to the ground, and Padmé will remake something beautiful and new out of the ashes.

---

3.

It is not uncommon for Obi-Wan to find himself thinking of the lower levels of Coruscant as he navigates the urban sprawl of Kili’ordian.

Kili’ordian is a moon that orbits the tourist planet of Mall’ordian, renowned for its beautiful crystalline forests. In order to preserve the natural splendor of the planet, most of the service workers live in crowded, dense housing on Kili’ordian. In this sort of place, yet another family displaced by the Empire from the Core and Mid-Rim and looking for work can fade easily into the crowd.

Padmé’s face glows in pinks and greens, caught in the neon light of the signage of an eatery across the street. She smiles and takes Obi-Wan’s hand, threading their fingers together as she leads the way.

He follows her. It pleases him to see her like this, lighthearted in a way she has rarely been since he first met her, a too-young queen carrying the weight of her planet on her shoulders.

“Anakin told me that you would like this place,” she says.

In fact, Anakin has the children for the night, convinced, as he often was, by Luke’s wide-eyed begging to go to the spaceport and watch the shuttles take off and land. Leia isn’t quite as enthralled, but where Luke goes, she goes too.

Of course, that leaves Padmé and Obi-Wan to fend for themselves for an evening, and Padmé suggested that they go out for dinner, a sort of date night that they never had during their sudden and rather tumultuous courtship, as entangled as it was with the ending of the war and sudden rise of the Empire. What had bound them together initially was their desperate love for Anakin and the children, and only now, over the last seven years have they had a chance to discover what their relationship looks like outside of that.

The eatery is built in the style that was popular on Ojom fifty years ago, chrome details, checkered floors, shiny red seats in both countertop and booth configurations. There’s even a Besalisk behind the till, grinning broadly at the two new customers. It’s no surprise that Anakin thinks Obi-Wan would like this place. He always did find it amusing how much time Obi-Wan spent in Dex’s Diner, even though he found the food mediocre at best.

When he was a padawan, Qui-Gon introduced him to Dex during one of their thornier missions, and Obi-Wan became a regular soon after. He would claim the booth in the far corner during the quiet hours so he could work on his essays for his padawan classes, going over the implications of centuries of philosophical writings about the nature of the Force. That time of his life feels marked by the steady hum of Coruscant traffic and the glittering glow of CoCo Town’s lights. His memories are tinged with a childish sweetness, that youthful impatience to become a Knight, for the rest of his life to begin. With the hindsight granted by age, he can both pity and envy his younger self. Envy for the optimism that came so easily to him and pity for the years of heartbreak yet to come.

As a kind of peace gesture, he did take Anakin to Dex’s from time to time while Anakin was still a padawan, just to give him a place to escape from the stifling strictures of the Temple. And in turn, Anakin brought Ahsoka when she was a padawan, all three of them using it as an old-fashioned refuge in a time of war. Obi-Wan isn’t under any illusions that either of them felt the same level of affection for the diner that he did, but he still liked the idea that it was something that was passed down to him, and that he could pass it along in turn.

But there won’t be any more generations of padawan learners. At least, none who will be able to haunt the booths of Dex’s Diner. There will never be new younglings in the Temple crèche, no more initiates lurking in the Temple hallways. Obi-Wan will never again be able to wander through the training halls and greet all the bright-eyed knights awaiting their assignments.

The wave of sadness that sweeps over him feels both bitterly old and achingly new. Old in the way that an ancient injury will flare up from time to time, the familiarity making the pain both dull and sharp all at once. New in the way that is reminded, all of a sudden, of this bit of loss, which he’d forgotten amongst the detritus of all the other things he has lost. Like a fresh wound, reopened too quickly.

Padmé says, “It reminds you of some place.” She glances around the diner, at the posters on the walls, at the pastries sitting underneath a clear transparisteel dome on the counter, and her expression is all too knowing. “Some place you’ve lost.”

“We’ve all lost places,” Obi-Wan says, because what is this one thing against the destruction he saw during the Wars? What does his loss mean against all the things that so many have already lost and will lose in the future? He tries to smile, but the expression refuses to remain fixed to his face.

“But this place was yours.”

Obi-Wan sighs. “Yes, I suppose it was.”

She smiles at him, and her smile is tinged with an echo of the same sadness he feels. “I think it’s good for us to let ourselves remember, even if we don’t feel like we deserve it. There were these gardens in central Theed that I loved. Every season, a new section of it would bloom into a dozen different colors. I would beg my parents to take me when I was a child, and then when I was queen, I asked that there be a day reserved every few months so I could visit them again and see how the colors had changed.”

“What happened to them?” Obi-Wan asks, almost afraid to hear the answer.

“I suppose the gardens are still there,” Padmé says. “But does it matter? I’m never going to see them again.” There might be ways to visit the planet, tapping into their networks of spies and smugglers, but the risk would be too great to justify a visit just to see the flowers in bloom.

“I’m sorry,” Obi-Wan says, because that’s the only comfort he can give right now.

She lifts their joined hands and presses a kiss to his knuckles. “I’m sorry for your loss, too.”

Obi-Wan thinks of the philosophy texts he used to study in a diner so much like this one. “The old masters would probably say that we cannot trap ourselves in the past. It allows the present to slip from our grasp.”

“They’re right, but that doesn’t mean we can’t remember it,” Padmé says. She tugs him closer, so that their shoulders bump against each other. “Our pasts are part of what made us who we are.”

“As always, I appreciate your wisdom, Senator Amidala,” Obi-Wan tells her, and his smile comes much easier to him this time.

---

This particular diner is called The Watering Hole. The Besalisk behind the counter introduces herself as Toya. Their Shawda club sandwiches aren’t quite as good as Dex’s -- they’re missing that hint of Devaronian heat that Dex liked to add to all his savory dishes -- but their Bantha milkshakes are just as tasty, that perfect mix of sweet and creamy. Obi-Wan wants to bring the twins here, wants to split an entire Sic-six layer cake between the five of them and listen to their reviews of the juri juice. Perhaps he can’t give Luke and Leia the experience of visiting Dex’s Diner, of watching the speeder-buses pick up and drop off passengers a block away, of listening to Dex’s favorite Ithorian HoloNet channel drone on in the background. But he can still give them this glimpse into his and Anakin’s life as it was on Coruscant. He can show them a tiny piece of what he used to call home.

---

4.

The ice plains of Misnor are a sight to behold, just flat, level ice that stretches out to the horizon. It’s really just a large, frozen-over lake, a thick layer of ice covering up the deep, dark waters below. A previous scientific survey only ever traveled out over the lake with droids who were built with carefully calibrated sensors that could measure the ice density and warn the surveyors of where the ice was thinnest and most dangerous.

Anakin, on the other hand, is letting Luke and Leia feel for instabilities with the Force. Now that the children have reached their eighth year, Obi-Wan has insisted that they step-up their training. It is easy enough to see that they are getting stronger every day. Toys go flying during arguments. Strong emotions like fear and joy and ripple out to affect the people around them. Luke, in particular, collects stray creatures everywhere he goes. Anakin has vague memories of his own mother’s frustrations with him during his childhood. His constant fascination with machinery was the largest source of friction, especially when his collection of spare parts threatened to outgrow the size of their meager slave quarters. He remembers what it was like, being that young and having knowledge that the people around you didn’t, looking at things and feeling how they should be, how they wanted to be. He remembers that power in his blood, at his fingertips. It had been joyous, and it had been confusing, and at times even a little scary, but he can give his children the awareness and training that he never had. And he has Obi-Wan and Padmé by his side to help.

The skies are a pale gray, blanketed by a gentle layer of clouds, and the air is crisp enough that could even be called sharp, dry and windy enough to bite at their faces. On their trek, they see a pack of Chiilak emerge from a break in the ice in the distance. They’re large mammals native to Misnor, covered in thick white fur, with four limbs and sharp claws. They don’t look entirely unlike wookiees. The Chiilak shake themselves dry once they are fully out of the water, spraying droplets in every direction. The largest one, probably the oldest of the group, is carrying a large fish in its jaws.

Luke stares at it with wide eyes underneath the fur-lined hood of his parka. Leia seems disinterested right next to him, where her gloved hand is clutching his.

“We’re going fishing, too,” Anakin offers. They don’t strictly need to go hunting for food, but some fresh fish would mean a break from the nutrient paste they’ve been eating for the past week. Their hideout for the past month has been an abandoned Republic scientific survey station, of which they are the only occupants. They had to flee Kili’ordian in the dead of night because one of their neighbors decided to report the nice family with the unsettlingly capable children in order to collect the bounty the Empire was offering for Force-sensitives. Thankfully, Padmé’s network of neighborhood mothers tipped her off about the plan before the Inquisitors could show up. But the whole incident left them with a desire to spend time away from other sentient beings until some of the heat died down. Of course, the heat would never fully die down, not as long as the Empire remained standing, and it is times like this that Anakin almost wishes he had given in and ripped out Palpatine’s throat with the Dark Side when he had a chance.

The survey station still had a good amount of supplies left behind from when it was abandoned, enough for them to live on comfortably for a few months, and there were even some copies of the scientific research left on the computers. The most interesting bits of that for Anakin were records of the local wildlife, including which were safe to consume for humans and even some suggestions on how to hunt and prepare them. Hence, a fishing expedition that can double as a small training mission.

Luke drops Leia’s hand and scampers ahead. “Right here!” he calls out. “I think I feel the fish here!”

He’s found a spot where the ice is sturdy enough, and Anakin can feel what Luke has sensed, the dense, swirling mass of life underneath. Not just the large variety of fish they’re looking for -- the surveyors had named them sturgs -- but the whole teemling ecosystem that they are a part of.

“Good choice,” Anakin says.

He gives Luke a pat on his head before he draws his lightsaber. There’s a relief in being able to carry it openly here, where there’s no one else to see them. He carves a neat hole in the ice, snapping the lightsaber shut just after he’s done and before he can melt and destabilize the ice beneath their feet.

Luke immediately pokes his head over the edge, peering through the hole into the dark water below. “I can’t see anything,” he complains.

“You saw well enough before without using your eyes,” Anakin says, and then he goes through the horrifying realization that he sounds exactly like Obi-Wan did during the early days of his apprenticeship.

Luke huffs out an impatient breath, but he still closes his eyes and centers himself in the Force, the way Obi-Wan has taught him to do.

Anakin keeps his voice steady and gentle as he says, “There’s a big one right there. Do you think you can catch it for us?” The surveyors didn’t have the ability to pluck the sturgs out of the water using the Force, so their method of catching the fish was much more complicated, using huts, spears, and even decoy droids to help them lure sturgs close then stab any fish that came within range.

Luke nods, his face pulled into a look of childish concentration. Anakin can feel the way his awareness expands in the Force, the way it pushes outwards, brushing over everything in its path. He can feel the moment when Luke manages to latch onto a sturg.

“That’s great. Now you remember how we practiced lifting things? Do you think you can lift the fish out of the water?’ Anakin asks.

Luke nods again, his frown deepening. It still amazes Anakin that he has children, that he and Padmé somehow managed to create these small, incredible people that he can love so deeply. He can almost understand the Jedi rules against attachment when he looks at them, because if anyone harmed a hair on Luke or Leia’s heads, it would make his previous flirations with the Dark Side look like a sedate week on a pleasure cruiser.

Anakin can feel the way Luke tugs at the fish. He’s a powerful child, but he is still young, and it can be difficult to maintain focus. Anakin threads through his own power and focus to buffer Luke’s, a delicate technique that Obi-Wan used with him more often than he would like to admit.

With the two of them working together, they yank the sturg out of the water, leaving a small splash in its wake, and it lands on the ice, thrashing about as it struggles to survive in the open air.

“Excellent work, son,” Anakin says. He claps Luke on the shoulder, and Luke scampers over to take a closer look at their catch. The fish is large enough to feed all five of them for a couple days, and Obi-Wan has been practicing his cooking over the past few years, so what he makes out of it might even be edible.

Anakin glances over to Leia to check on her, to see if she’s copying Luke in trying to find and catch her own sturg. She is very much not trying to copy Luke. She is standing off to the side, scowling with her arms crossed over her chest, clearly upset. Anakin doesn’t think he has any claim to being the best father in the galaxy, but he knows, without a doubt, that he would give up his other hand, just to make her happy again.

“What’s wrong?” he asks.

“Fishing is stupid,” Leia says. “It’s cold, and it’s gross.” She makes a face at the now-dead fish that Luke is poking at with his gloved fingers in curiosity and excitement. “And I wish I had stayed back at the station with Mom.” Padmé’s day was busy with meetings, checking in with the various other resistance cells to see which systems might be safe enough for them, helping to plan where they would go next. Obi-Wan was helping with additional HoloNet research and coordination. Anakin knew that he and the kids would just be underfoot if they stayed, which is why he proposed the fishing trip.

“Hey,” Anakin says, “you were excited to come out with me this morning, right?” She and Luke have been going through a version of cabin fever that is somehow worse than the actual cabin fever they got during long space flights, a kind of restless energy that can almost feel like it’s going to vibrate the walls around them.

“Yeah, but that was before I realized it was stupid,” Leia insists. As the twins have gotten older, they’ve been trying to find ways to differentiate themselves from each other. Leia likes being more social and outgoing, and it was harder for her to leave the friends she had made on Kili’ordian behind than it was for Luke. But she hadn’t complained, hadn’t protested, because she was getting old enough now to fully understand why it was important for them to keep moving.

“And now you know you don’t like it,” Anakin says. “You didn’t know that this morning. It’s worth trying things at least once, just so you know for sure you don’t like it, right? That’s what Obi-Wan would say.”

Leia’s scowl softens, ever so slightly.

“When we go back, we can do something you find fun after this, okay? I’m proud of you for coming out here with us, even if you ended up hating it.”

“Okay,” Leia says mulishly, but she still uncrosses her arms long enough to give him a quick hug.

---

Later, Anakin and Leia play dejarik in the commissary of the survey station as Obi-Wan does his best not to destroy the small, modest kitchen and leave it reeking of fish. Luke sometimes watches, and sometimes he bothers Obi-Wan, but he doesn’t stick to one thing for long.

Leia is much better at dejarik now than she was a year ago, capable of even pulling off maneuvers that take Anakin by surprise. His children are growing up so fast, so much faster than he ever wanted them to have to, and Anakin once again thinks of his own mother, ever kind, ever patient, and he’s amazed by her and her strength all over again. In another world, she could have met them, her grandchildren, and he mourns for her in this one, knowing that she never will.

---

5.

It’s a clear day, and a golden sun shines brightly overhead. The water of the ocean glitters in the light. A flock of seabirds soar overhead, calling to each other in a song that means that they are drawing ever closer to shore. Obi-Wan closes his eyes and tilts his face up, breathing in the salty breeze.

The oceans of Illarreen are large and vast, dotted with small islands. The native Poss’Nomin are not water dwellers like the Mon Calamari are, but they are accomplished seafarers, and even with the introduction of spaceflight, many still choose to travel over the water.

Their odd human family has been adopted by one of the caravans that specializes in traveling to some of the more remote settlements on islands where the terrain is unsuited for shuttle landings. The Illarreen government has put restrictions on the engines of water-bound ships to protect the native marine wildlife, which means journeys can take days or even weeks before they reach land again. Their little caravan embraces the relaxed pace. They have their routes, but they aren’t afraid to take detours, and they relish the chance to show the outsiders some of the hidden and special places they’ve found.

The nomadic life within a nomadic life their family has adopted is surprisingly soothing. Obi-Wan prefers the sea travel over the cold, empty expanse of hyperspace. Sometimes the echoing silence of it was comforting, but more often than that, it was eerie. He likes the pleasant rocking of their boat, the shine of the sun during the days, the glow of the moons at night, the hum of the planet’s life all around them.

He is, as he usually is, the first person above deck at the beginning of the day. The bit of alone time is a welcome respite from the indefatigable energy of the children and the daily responsibilities he has aboard the boat. He finds the cushion he uses for meditation and settles in for the morning, closing his eyes and feeling the sun on his face, the breeze in his hair. It’s easy enough to lose himself in the dips and swells of the Force here, where he can be drawn into it by the sea’s currents. Time drifts away from him, and he loses himself in the sensation of being the tiniest speck in the overwhelming vastness of the galaxy.

His meditation time is then interrupted, as it usually is, by the laughter of children -- in this particular case, one specific child.

“Ben!” Leia screeches. Obi-Wan had gained the nickname when the twins were much younger, when it seemed like a simple and easy name to use alongside ‘Mom’ and ‘Dad.’

Obi-Wan opens his eyes. “Hello, little one,” he says, smiling.

She throws her arms around his neck, pulling him into an affectionate hug. Both the twins have been growing up fast, but she’s been growing faster than Luke is, much to Luke’s consternation. “Dad said I should come bother you while he and Luke do the laundry.”

“Oh, he did, did he?” Obi-Wan asks, laughing as she leans herself against his shoulder. “I believe this might be considered retaliation on the part of your father.”

“Why would he do that?” Leia asks. Her eyes are wide with genuine curiosity.

“I met your father when he wasn’t much older than you. There was a period of time when I was responsible for raising him. I may have mentioned, recently, how much the both of you resemble him at that age, and I believe he may have taken the tiniest bit of offense to that statement.”

Leia already seems bored with the explanation halfway through it, and she scampers away, towards the bow of the ship. “How much longer is it going to be?” she asks.

Obi-Wan lets the topic change without complaint. “Not much longer yet,” he says, thinking of the birds overhead, a sure sign that they’re approaching land. He stands up and joins her at the railing of the deck, looking into the faraway mists.

Soon enough (though perhaps not soon enough for Leia), a dark spot appears on the horizon, growing bigger every moment. As it comes into view, Obi-Wan can see that it’s a small island, the shape of it mostly dominated by the sharp, spidly spike of a mountain. The town at the base of it is built partially into the steep cliff face, a wall of windowed domiciles looking out over the sea.

Leia bounces excitedly on the balls of her feet. “It’s so tall. Do you think we can go to the top?” It’s been obvious that the children do not enjoy the slow, leisurely pace of life on Illarreen the way the adults do, not as content to spend their days trapped in the familiar cabins of their ship.

Obi-Wan studies the mountain as they continue to draw closer. It seems like there are structures at the peak, large and distinct enough to be visible even from a distance. Presumably, there are also paths up to those structures. “I think we might be able to,” he says. Now that they’re getting a clearer look at it, he can see that the mountain is smaller than it might have initially appeared, when it was a faraway, jagged break in the seemingly-flat surface of the sea. It shouldn’t take more than a few hours to scale the thing.

“And you’re going to take us, right?” Leia asks, wide-eyed and pleading. She knows exactly how he reacts to that expression, and she exploits it ruthlessly.

“Yes, of course,” he says with a sigh.

Leia gives him a beaming grin in return.

---

The local Poss’Nomin are delighted to tell them about the various trails that lead to the top of the mountain. Apparently, the town has important festivals that are celebrated at the peak, and the space also can function as a campsite during the rest of the year.

Padmé smiles when Obi-Wan offers to take both of the children for the day, and she presses a kiss to his cheek as an offer of thanks. She’s been roped into helping with the trade negotiations with the town’s leader, so she will be busy in the meantime. Anakin also gives Obi-Wan a kiss on the cheek, but his own plans seem to be about spending the rest of the day napping, which doesn’t feel entirely fair to Obi-Wan, but he supposes Anakin did lose the most sleep to Luke’s recent bout of food poisoning. Luke is a spirited, adventurous child, and that means he’s willing to try seafood offered from one of the other caravan members without verifying it’s human-safe first.

He bounced back quickly enough, like most children his age, and he looks none the worse for wear as he and Leia scramble ahead of Obi-Wan up the rocky slope of the trail. Obi-Wan appreciates their enthusiasm, but he feels no urgency to keep up with them. They are young, and he is old, and this is simply how things work.

When they’re about halfway up the trail, Luke starts to lag behind, though. “Ugh, I’m tired,” he whines. “This stupid mountain is too tall.” He’s a willful child -- they both are -- and they’ve both been testing how far and how much they can get away with, just because they can.

Obi-Wan falls into step beside him. “Do you want to get to the top?” he asks. While Luke isn’t as guarded and angry as Anakin was at his age, he has inherited his father’s moodiness and impulsivity. Obi-Wan is fairly certain that Luke does have the energy to finish the rest of their hike, but he doesn’t want to for whatever reason, and Obi-Wan will have to tease that reasoning out.

Luke twists his mouth into a grimace. “Yes,” he says, eventually. “They said there were statues.”

“Then we will have to keep going,” Obi-Wan says with a much-practiced patience.

“We could have taken a speeder,” Luke grumbles.

“The Poss’Nomin don’t allow speeders on the trail,” Obi-Wan explains. From what he understands, those with mobility issues will ride their imported orbak or use the orbak to pull hover carriages up the steep and precarious slopes.

“But it would be faster that way,” Luke complains.

“Sometimes faster isn’t always better,” Obi-Wan explains. He is certain that, yes, this was a conversation he had with Anakin, once upon a time.

Luke says, “That doesn’t make any sense.”

Leia, who has slowed down to stay with the rest of the group, says, “You don’t make any sense.” She sticks her tongue out at Luke.

Luke sticks her tongue out back at her.

“Manners,” Obi-Wan says mildly, and they both shoot him guilty looks. He continues on, letting the matter drop for now. “Hmm, well, I suppose I could put it this way: do you want to become a Jedi Knight?” He gives his beard a thoughtful stroke as he thinks over how best to impart this particular lesson.

“Yes,” Luke says without hesitation. He, more than Leia, loves to hear stories about the Order. He loves Obi-Wan’s tales of the first Sith Wars and even the most mundane details of growing up in the Jedi Temple. He begs for demonstrations with Obi-Wan and Anakin’s lightsabers and watches them with the sort of naked longing that will probably mean they will have to hunt for black market kyber crystals in the future. Obi-Wan can only find a bittersweetness in Luke’s enthusiasm. He and Anakin haven’t told Luke the difficult stories yet, about the war and the loss and the pain. They haven’t tried to explain the complex tangle of politics, tradition, and stagnation that led to the Jedi’s downfall. They will tell those stories one day, but until that day comes, Luke’s adoration is too childish, too uncomplicated.

“I think that this climb is not so different from becoming a Jedi in many ways,” Obi-Wan explains. “There are no shortcuts to understanding the Force, not even with the Dark Side. Sometimes the journey can feel long and impossible, but with some perseverance, some dedication, and some hard work, we can find ourselves achieving things we never thought we could achieve. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Luke nods, frowning, his young face drawing into a look of deep thought. “I think so.” He hesitates for a moment before asking, “Is it really that difficult, being a Jedi Knight?”

“I won’t lie to you and tell you that it’s easy, Luke. You see how much danger we all are in just because of who your father and I are, much less who your mother is. I think you can sense how much we struggle with our past choices and the path that we have chosen to walk. Even now, perhaps especially now. But I believe, for myself, that it has all been worth it.” He gives Luke a gentle pat on the shoulder. “Just, as I imagine, it will be worth it when we reach the top of this mountain.”

“Yeah,” Leia says, “stop being so lazy.”

Luke frowns at her. “I’m not lazy! I’m just tired!” he insists. He looks like he’s gearing up for a proper argument now.

“Children, please,” Obi-Wan says a little louder, following it up with a heavy sigh. He is not entirely confident in his ability to deal with two mini-Anakins who have inherited their father’s competitiveness. But he is doing his best.

Thankfully, they still respect him enough to look appropriately chastened.

“Sorry,” Leia mumbles vaguely in Luke’s direction.

Obi-Wan continues, “No Jedi takes the journey to knighthood alone. We have the Force with us always. We have our teachers and the wisdom of their teachers before them. If we are lucky, we also have the support of our friends and peers,” he gives them another pointed look, “and in rare cases, even our families. Come now.” He holds out both his hands. Luke takes one and Leia takes the other. “This old man would also like to see the statues.”

---

6.

Evenings on the Kuantor mining station tend to have a lull to them, that liminal time between the day shift and the night shift. Of course, the difference between day and night isn’t particularly well-defined when the clouds outside the station remain a steady orange, glowing in the light of the station, no matter what the position of the sun is overhead.

The mining platform was built decades and decades ago by prospectors who were hopeful that Kuantor would be a good source of tibanna gas. That hadn’t panned out for them, but it did work out nicely for the burgeoning rebellion, which commandeered the long-abandoned station to be used as a base. Unlike mining colonies like Cloud City on Bespin, this particular station is buried deep in the gas giant’s atmosphere, which made it cheaper and easier for the mining company when they wanted to strip a planet of its natural resources, and it’s safer for a growing militia, because the density of the gaseous atmosphere will help obscure the structure from long-range scanners.

Padmé has been overseeing the establishment of this particular base, and she is busy setting up recruitment processes, communication channels, personnel rotations. Anakin has been put in charge of base security and Obi-Wan in charge of recruit training. What had seemed so many years ago to be nothing but a far off dream is becoming more and more of a reality every day. They are raising an army. There will be war. Padmé is fully aware that it will be ugly. It will be painful. But all she can hope is that the will of the Force is with them.

She can tell that Anakin and Obi-Wan are somewhat troubled by their new roles and responsibilities. They are drawing on their old personas, taking on mannerisms that had faded away over the last ten years. There is a military set to their shoulders, a blankness in their expression when they make difficult strategic and tactical decisions.

But all her concerns over them aside, they are both adults, and they have both been soldiers. She trusts them to know how to manage the difficulties of the conflict ahead and their place within it. What truly terrifies her, what keeps her up at night -- so much so that even Anakin’s gentle touches and Obi-Wan’s soothing words cannot coax her back to sleep -- is the effect that all of this has on Luke and Leia.

Luke has been spending an uncomfortable number of hours in the flight simulators, the ones they use to train fighter pilots. And when he can steal some of their time, he demands lightsaber lessons from Obi-Wan and Anakin, running through the drills they show him until he’s red-faced and sweating.

Leia, on the other hand, has sweet-talked the captain of the guard into taking her to the practice range, where the older woman has shown her how to aim and fire a standard issue blaster. Leia has also been sneaking around and eavesdropping on Padmé’s meetings with the other rebel leaders, and she accumulates gossip, both on-station and off, with the dedication of a spymaster.

Padmé refuses to let her rebellion turn children into soldiers. And she will not let her own twins, the babies she birthed from her own body, be the first.

---

Her first conversation about it is with Anakin. Regardless of his other duties, he always comes back to their quarters early, often returning even before Padmé and Obi-Wan. His responsibilities are the most likely to send him off-world to inspect supply lines or to scout possible new base planets as they expand, and he cherishes the time he can spend on Kuantor with his family.

“I’m worried about Luke and Leia,” she tells him as he sprawls out on the couch in their main sitting area.

He sits up straight to look at her. “What’s wrong?” he asks. He studies her with his usual unsettling focus, the kind that she’s always found both thrilling and terrifying at the same time.

“The things they’re interested in, the things they are studying, I-- they’re too young to fight a war.” She sits down on the couch next to him, letting herself slump against his chest, and he puts an arm around her shoulders, holding her close. This is her refuge from the rest of her worlds, the place where she feels safe and cared-for and loved.

Anakin says, “I was their age when I participated in the Battle of Naboo.”

Padmé remembers him then, the bright-eyed boy with the too-serious face who somehow managed to save the day without anyone else noticing. She had been so young herself, elected to the position of Queen as a teenager and desperately trying to keep her planet from falling apart around her ears while forces much bigger and much more powerful than her worked against her. It seems impossible now that anyone had asked her to take on that role when she was so young and so untested. If things were different, if it was Leia in her place, would she feel comfortable with Leia taking up a similar mantle? She doesn’t know. “This isn’t their war to fight,” Padmé says.

Anakin sighs, “No, it isn’t.” He runs his fingers through her hair. She leans into it.

“This is what parents do, right? We make things better for our children.” Padmé doesn’t know what she needs from Anakin right now. Some reassurance, maybe. She knows that the things they are building here are what’s right for the rest of the galaxy, but is she sacrificing her family in the process?

“We’re doing everything we can,” Anakin promises, and for now, it’s enough.

---

Padmé reaches out to Obi-Wan next. They tend to have their morning meal together, especially when Anakin is on away missions, and Padmé appreciates it as a time of day when they can check in and reconnect. Obi-Wan’s steadiness has always been an effective counterpart to Anakin’s passion, and she feels like she could use some of his perspective now.

“Ten is the age when initiates at the Temple could be taken as padawan learners,” Obi-Wan says, leaning back in his chair as he takes a sip of his moof milk. He says the words without judgement, either for or against, for the practice. “Things were more complicated during the Wars, though. Ahsoka was assigned to Anakin when she was fourteen, and any padawans younger than that were strictly restricted to non-combatant missions.”

Padmé stares down at the simple, industrial cast of their table, one of the useful remnants left behind on the station. She has heard rumors that the children on base have been playing war games in the quieter hallways, something resembling siege tactics and how to defend against them. It’s not too different from some of the games she played as a child, chasing after the other neighborhood children with a water blaster. But there’s something unsettling about the stories Padmé has heard, because in them, the twins have been ringleaders, and the reported games sound less like innocent fun and more like practice for the real thing. Her stomach turns over, killing her appetite. “I want to hide them away from all of this, but I know I can’t,” Padmé confesses. “We had ten years where -- it was something we could worry about later, and now we’ve gotten to later, and I don’t know how to deal with it.”

“Unfortunately, time does only move in one direction,” Obi-Wan says, “at least for us mere flesh-and-blood beings.”

“What should I do?” Padmé asks.

Obi-Wan strokes his beard. She’s always found the gesture comforting, a sign of him giving the situation some deep thought. “They are growing up. They are their own people. I think you should speak to them about it.”

Padmé sighs. “I think I was afraid you were going to say that.” If she doesn’t talk to Luke and Leia, the whole thing can remain a half-formed fear in the back of her mind. Talking to them about her concerns could turn those hazy fears into a cold reality, and she hasn’t wanted to face up to that.

“You give yourself too little credit,” Obi-Wan says. “You’re the bravest person I know.” He stands up so that he can lean over the table and give her a sweet, lingering kiss.

Though there are many things in her life that Padmé dislikes, that she resents, she also feels a deep gratitude for these men, her loves, and all that they have given to her and continue to give to her every day.

She prepares herself for a conversation.

---

The children can tell that Padmé is preoccupied by something. She has never been good at concealing her feelings from them, and she has never really tried to. After a lifetime in politics, she appreciates the places where she doesn’t have to hide, to prevaricate, and her family is one of them.

Leia is the one who forces the confrontation. “Mom, why are you sad?” she asks when they’re going on a walk together through some of the upper decks of the station, where the massive shield generators stand in long, lonely rows, emitting a low, steady hum that Padmé has always found soothing.

Luke doesn’t interject, but he nods along with Leia’s question, also invested in the answer.

Padmé brushes her hair out of her face. She had been wearing it short for the last few years because it was easier to take care of that way, but she’s been growing it out a bit since they’ve landed on Kuantar, wanting to try something new. “I’m sad because I’m scared,” she admits. “I’m scared that I’m bringing you into a war that you shouldn’t have to be a part of. I’m scared that I was selfish for keeping you with us when we could have sent you away to somewhere safe instead.”

Leia frowns. “You can’t send us away,” she says, since that is apparently the one part of Padmé’s confession that she takes issue with. “We won’t let you.”

Padmé takes a deep breath and squats down so that she can see eye-to-eye. Her children love her. It feels like a gift and a curse all at once. “This war isn’t yours to fight. I don’t want you growing up thinking it is.”

“We know,” Luke says. He places a hand on her shoulder, almost a mirror image of the same gesture she’s seen Anakin give him.

“I know you’ve been training, even when you don’t think we know. I don’t want the two of you to think that it’s your responsibility to become -- to be like us,” Padmé explains. She had a front-row seat to the toll the Clone Wars took on Anakin. She sees the toll that this new war is taking on both Anakin and Obi-Wan now.

“We don’t think that,” Leia insists, her expression stubborn and serious.

Luke nods in agreement.

Leia continues, “I’m training because I’m going to fix the Republic. You said it was broken and that was why it turned into the Empire. I need to understand why it’s broken so I can fix it.” Her young face holds no trace of doubt. The relentless determination she carries with her is all too familiar.

Luke chimes in. “And I’m going to rebuild the Jedi with Dad and Ben. I can’t do that if I’m not a Jedi, too.” His expression mirrors Leia’s.

Padmé looks between them, her children, and it still amazes her to see how big, how smart, how incredible, they’ve turned out to be. They were once both small enough to fit into the crooks of her elbows, and now here they are, setting their own destinies. She pulls them both into a hug, one of them in each arm, and they hug her back, clinging to her neck and squeezing tight. Tears well up in Padmé’s eyes, but they’re the good kind, an outpouring of relief.

When Padmé was small, her mother had once shown her how to shape clay on the pottery wheel. What Padmé remembers is the wet, squishy feel of the clay, both malleable and tough all at once, and the warmth of her mother’s larger hands placed around her smaller ones, guiding her through the process. The resulting bowl was lumpy, misshapen and imperfect, but Padmé’s mother had beamed at her with pride over this thing they had made together.

There are her babies, ready and willing to remake the galaxy. And with all the places they’ve been, all the experiences they’ve had, all the things they’ve been taught, all the love they’ve been given, Padmé believes that they will.

FIN.