Chapter 1: Part 1
Chapter Text
Anakin Skywalker had the best parents in the galaxy.
He was only five, and there were still a lot of things he didn’t know, but he was sure about that.
He couldn’t remember a time where his dad didn’t let him into his workspace to tinker with machines in their junk shop. Couldn’t remember a time where he asked his dad a question and he didn’t answer or a time where he wanted to do something and his dad didn’t help him find a way to do it. Mom usually didn’t mind, but she drew the line at letting him build and learn how to drive podracer. And when Dad said maybe Anakin was a little too young for that right now, Mom said he’d never be old enough before picking him up and carrying him inside.
(He did learn to drive a podracer eventually. At six. With Dad watching him, of course. Not that it made much difference to Mom, who pretended she wasn’t angry with Dad. But Anakin could just… tell and was proven right when after they thought he was asleep, he overheard them yelling at each other over it.
“I don’t see what the big deal is. I was driving them at his age, and I never got hurt.”
“Ani’s not you!”
Well, of course, Anakin wasn’t his dad. Even though they had the same name, and people said he looked exactly like him. But Anakin got the feeling that his mother meant more than just that.)
Even though Mom wouldn’t let him drive a podracer, she did let Anakin keep the skeletal frame of the protocol droid he found in a pile of junk that some smugglers stranded on planet traded to them for parts for their ship. They called it a piece of junk, but when Anakin said he could rebuild it, Mom just smiled and said, “I know you can, little one.”
Mom wasn’t human like him and Dad. She was a togruta. With red-orange skin and blue stripes on her white montrals and lekku. And her lekku were soft and warm and when he was scared, she would take him into her arms and let him hold onto them for comfort until he fell asleep, or he wasn’t scared anymore.
Mom also took him with her to the market once a week. It was Anakin’s favorite thing to do outside of learning to fix things with Dad. She taught him to “barter” and not get tricked into paying too much for things that weren’t worth the price. But she also taught him to be fair. They wanted a good price but they shouldn’t take advantage of people in desper—people in need. She said they should try to be kind to others. Only mostly, according to Dad.
When Anakin asked why only mostly, Dad said, “Kindness is earned. And people who aren’t kind to others don’t deserve your kindness back.”
Mom didn’t look like she all the way agreed with that, but didn’t say anything all the same.
Five years ago, Anakin Skywalker and Ahsoka Tano, at twenty-two and seventeen respectively, arrived here. The how was irrelevant seeing as they never figured it out anyway, and the Force, much to their initial frustration, didn’t seem too keen to give them answers.
Anakin hadn’t been exactly sure when, though, because time on Tatooine was a lot different than standard Republic time.
At least, he didn’t know until Ahsoka somehow got lost and wandered into the slave quarters. Until she stumbled upon a slave crying out as she gave birth. Until, ever a Jedi at heart, she went to see if she could help. Until said woman died soon after naming her son, and with quick and clever thinking, the midwife bundled the child up, dumped him in Ahsoka’s arms after recognizing her to be free and said, “Take him before her depur returns. I’ll tell him she died before the babe could be birthed. Take him and make sure he’s raised free.”
The next thing Anakin knew was that his former padawan was standing in front of him with said bundle and when he demanded to know where she had been and—Wait, was she carrying something alive?
“Ahsoka,” he said sternly in the tone he used to use when he was actually her Jedi master. It had hardly worked then and certainly not after, so he was a little surprised when she actually hesitated.
“I think…”
Ahsoka trailed off. Bit her lip. Averted her gaze. And, fucking hell, she was just gone for a couple of hours. How much trouble could she have gotten into?
“I think he’s you?”
Then she quickly began to explain how she came across the child and why she had brought him here.
Away from the darkness and the chaos and the politics of Coruscant, the war, and everything, the Force practically vibrated as it sang its will. Loud and clear. It had been a while since Anakin had heard the Force like that. So long that he would have wondered if the entity that was supposedly his parent had forsaken him if not for the fact that he still felt its light. Still could tap into its power.
Son, it whispered when Anakin laid eyes on the whimpering, red babe in Ahsoka’s arms. And if Anakin had any doubts, it added, Father.
Without the darkness. Without the politics. Without the war. Without the Jedi. Without all that, Anakin was not only compelled to heed his parent’s call but also he had the choice to heed it.
So Anakin simply said, “Okay.”
And that was that.
Mostly.
Sometimes Anakin missed his old life. His old universe. Dimension. Whatever. He missed Padmé. He wondered how she was faring without him. How the galaxy was faring without him. How the war was faring without him. How the Jedi and Obi-wan and the Chancellor were faring.
But then his son would run up to him with a grin over some mischief or discovery he’d made, and Anakin thought that all of that was a worthy sacrifice. And, when he saw Ahsoka walk in behind Ani either looking unimpressed with Ani’s antics or just as excited some days, he would think that at least the Force had the grace not to send him here alone.
It was only natural, really, Ahsoka thought to herself, that Ani would decide she was his mom.
It wasn’t like she was just going to sit on the sidelines and let Skyguy raise himself while she just watched. Besides, like always, Anakin would have been totally hopeless without her.
(Sometimes she’d remember before. When she saw him again after she’d left, and how much the darkness had grown, but she had pretended not to notice and that everything had been okay. And she’d sometimes wonder with a fair amount of terror what would have happened if they hadn’t been brought here.)
At some point along the way, Ahsoka would stop seeing the baby as her former master’s infant self and see him for the individual person that he was. Then he stopped being “the baby” and started being “her son.” And the day her son, a little over a year old, grinned up at her and said, “Mama,” it was settled.
Ahsoka quickly realized that it was going to be confusing figuring out which Anakin was being called as baby Anakin started to get older. So when he was three months old, she nicknamed him “Ani.” When Anakin first heard her call the baby that, he’d gone very still and given her an intense, peculiar look that might have made men three times her age falter.
Then he asked in an stilted tone, “Where’d you hear that name from?”
“Nowhere. Just was playing with nicknames, and it made sense,” Ahsoka answered. Then she raised her eye markings and asked, “Why? You don’t like it.”
It was a long time before Anakin shook his head and said, “No. It’s fine.”
It didn’t sound like it was fine. But Anakin didn’t protest the nickname any further, so Ahsoka didn’t stop.
(It was years before he admitted to her that his mom called him Ani. And so had Padmé, his wife. But by that time, Ahsoka had already worked all those things out on her own, much to Anakin’s chagrin.
“You wear your heart out in the open, Anakin. There’s not as much mystery to you as you think.”)
One of Anakin’s most vivid memories from childhood was when he realized what a slave was. When he realized why Mom and Dad didn’t like him straying too far from the junk shop alone. When his friends came to play with them out in front of the shop like they always did and one was missing. The pretty purple twi’lek girl. And when he’d asked where she was, everyone went quiet until someone whispered, “Depur sold her.”
“She was too pretty. It was always going to happen,” said another one of the children.
Anakin didn’t comprehend what that meant. Didn’t understand how a person could be sold because a person wasn’t a speeder or a spanner or any of the other things Dad sold and fixed in their store.
And then when he asked when she’d be back, because they had to be wrong. They had to. A person couldn’t be sold away from their Mom and Dad and…
“She’s not coming back, Ani,” Kitster said. “Not ever.”
Anakin didn’t know how he knew that was true. How he knew that he’d never see his friend again. He just did. And so he ran into the junk shop to find Mom, and when she asked what was wrong, he only leapt into her arms and sobbed.
Anakin didn’t grow up on Tatooine with the luxury of having his innocence protected. There was no such thing as innocence when he’d been born a slave. But he did remember growing up with Obi-wan and being angry when his master didn’t tell him things. Growing angry when he thought Obi-wan was treating him like a child and didn’t trust him.
But now, as he looked at his five-year-old son sobbing in Ahsoka’s arms and Ahsoka helplessly holding him as she tried to comfort him to no avail, he knew that it was never a matter of trust. Not before the war anyway. It was all about trying to protect him.
Anakin had thought it was stupid. As far as he’d been concerned, it was too late to protect him. And even if it wasn’t too late, he had to find out one day anyway.
He didn’t think it was so stupid anymore. Because he’d do anything right them to rewind time and for Ani not to have been faced with the cruelty of the galaxy they lived in. The cruelty of the planet they lived on. He’d thought him not being a slave would keep him by being touched by the dark tendrils and stain of slavery. But they lived on fucking Tatooine of all places in the middle of fucking Mos Espa, a few roads away from fucking slave quarters.
He thought he was being kind by letting his son live in the happy bubble of him and his mother’s protection. But, perhaps, it would be kinder to reveal the nature of those things in his happy bubble so he wouldn’t have to face that cruelty like this.
He failed his son by not warning and preparing him for the cruelty.
He would not fail him again.
Ani eventually wore himself out crying, and Ahsoka took him to their quarters above the shop to tuck him into bed.
Anakin kept the shop closed the next day. Ani was sleeping in, emotionally exhausted which was all good and well because it allowed Anakin to go to the market to get the ingredients he needed. Then, when Ani was awake, he sat him down at the table.
“What’s this?” Ani asked when Anakin sat the warm cup of liquid in front of him.
“It’s tzai,” Anakin said. “My mother taught me how to make it.”
“You’ve never made it before.”
“No. I haven’t.”
A failure on Anakin’s part.
He remembered that feeling. Feeling like he needed help and everyone around him was failing him and there was no one he could go to. Well, except Palpatine. But he had been the Chancellor of the fucking Republic.
He wouldn’t ever let his son feel that way. He wouldn’t fail him again.
Ahsoka walked into the room then, and always keenly aware of when moments were intimate or sacred, she began to slowly back out before Ani saw her. But Anakin did see her, hesitated, and made a split second decision.
“Want some?” he asked, referring to the tzai but also more and hoping Ahsoka understood that so he wouldn’t have to say it.
She smiled, and he knew she understood.
“Sure,” Ahsoka replied casually before taking a seat.
When they all had tzai in front of them, Anakin told Ani the stories his mother told him. The stories he’d all but forgotten so caught up in the chaos and the darkness before. And though Ahsoka never heard them before, she helped him convey the stories in words that Ani would comprehend. And at the end, Anakin said, “I tell you these stories, Ani, to save your life.”
Ani didn’t understand any of that now. But hopefully, he wouldn’t become so scarred with the trauma of slavery like Anakin was that, like his father, he’d try to forget it all later. Hopefully, he’d see it as the protection it was and not a burden to carry.
(They had tzai at the table every evening after that, and Anakin told his son the stories until Ani was practically telling the stories every night himself.
And until Ani, eventually, left to become a Jedi.)
One day, Ahsoka came home from the market with Ani and said to Anakin, “I found this today.”
She handed him the small bag of shaved bark that smelled of smoke and earth and had attracted Ahsoka to the vendor selling it earlier. Ahsoka had picked it up, and while making small talk with them, Ahsoka commented that she wanted to take it home to see if Anakin would be willing to add it to his tzai blend. For some reason, the vendor smiled and gave it to her for free, making Ahsoka promise to come back and tell how it went.
Ahsoka had gotten the sneaking feeling she was missing something, but took it anyway.
“I thought you could add it to your blend. Give us a little variety.”
Anakin stared at her like she’d grown another head before sputtering some incoherent words as his ears turned red. Then he fell silent. It occurred to Ahsoka that she’d made some type of Tatooine cultural and social faux pas that she wasn’t aware of. So she hastily reached out to take it from Anakin’s hands only from him to pull it out her reach.
“What?” Ahsoka asked, now only confused.
“Nothing,” Anakin said hastily and then added, “We can try it tonight.”
They did. After Ahsoka got Anakin to stop being stubborn about letting her help him figure out how to balance out the flavor of the new ingredient with his old ones. She wasn’t that helpless in the kitchen. Then, when they were satisfied with it, they let Ani try the first cup.
Ani’s eye lit up after one sip and then he brought his mug back to his lips, nearly burning his tongue in excitement.
“Guess the new blend’s a hit,” Ahsoka said before pouring herself and Anakin a cup.
Anakin stared at her hand for a moment has she held out his cup. But before Ahsoka could ask, he took the mug and sat at the table with Ani.
When she saw the vendor again, they asked how it went and Ahsoka just answered, “Good. It was a hit,” causing the vendor to smile and congratulate her before paying attention to a new customer.
Ahsoka got the distinct feeling she was missing something, but also got the impression she shouldn’t ask because it should have been something simply understood.
Anakin Skywalker was six-years-old when he realized he could make things float without touching them. So he ran into the kitchen, first thing after he figured it out, to show his parents.
When Mom noticed him floating his breakfast plate from the counter before she could pick it up to bring it to him, she didn’t act surprised or even yell in shock like the time he climbed to the top of the shop so he could win hide and seek. She simply got Dad’s attention from where he was making tzai and asked, “Anakin. Are you doing that?”
“Am I doing wh—” Dad froze when he turned around in time to see Ani set his plate in front of him with a triumphant smile. Then he replied dryly, “No. And I’m going to take a guess and say you didn’t do it either.”
“I did it!” Anakin exclaimed.
“Fuck,” Dad muttered, and Mom didn’t even hit him like she usually did when Dad says bad words in front of him.
Dad decided to open the shop late that day so he and Mom could explain the Force to him.
“So it’s magic,” Anakin decided.
Mom gasped and said, “No!”
But Dad just laughed, kissed him on the forehead and said, “Something like that, son.”
“It’s not!” Mom insisted.
“Depends on who you ask,” Dad replied. “But remember, son—"
“I know. I can’t show anyone,” Anakin said before his father could finish. “And don’t use it all the time even when it’s just us.”
“Good.”
Mom and Dad let him go after that. And even though they tried to act like it was no big deal, and they told him what he did wasn’t bad, he could tell they were… not worried. Something less than that but not fine either. They exchanged glances when they thought he wasn’t looking.
And that night, when he was supposed to be long asleep, he heard them tip into his room. Felt the weight of Mom sit on the bed. Felt her fingers run through his hair. Heard her say to Dad, “The Jedi are going to come for him. Aren’t they?”
“They came for me,” Dad said quietly.
“Are we going to let them take him?”
“They’re not taking anyone,” Dad replied firmly. Then he sighed. “We’ll let him choose.”
“You think he’ll choose to go like you did?”
“It was either be a Jedi or be a slave. It wasn’t really a choice.”
Dad sounded angry about that but Mom didn’t comment. Just pressed a kiss to his forehead before he felt her weight leave and heard them leave his room.
Anakin decided after that to find out what a Jedi was.
In this world, Anakin Skywalker isn’t born a slave and has two loving parents who he will never be traumatically torn away from. But his friends, his community, the people he cares about, his father’s people, his people. They were slaves. And he would never forget the name and face of one friend who was here one day and sold the next. He would grow up just as angry and indignant at the injustice and unkindness as his father did in another universe.
When he found out what a Jedi was and what they did, he made his choice. When the Jedi came, he would go with them. He’d become the most powerful Jedi in the galaxy. And then he’d come back home to Mom and Dad and free all the slaves.
(Dad was, unfortunately, going to beat him to it, much to Anakin’s dismay. At least, on Tatooine.)
Anakin would never tell Ahsoka exactly how the Jedi found him, and she wished she’d had this kind of curiosity about him when it hadn’t mattered and when he might have told her. Only might. Because he was stubbornly tightlipped about his past back then and still was. He wouldn’t even just tell her when the Jedi had come for him in their universe.
Ahsoka always knew that Anakin had come to the temple late. She just wasn’t sure how late. But it was later than Ahsoka expected. By now, barring their arrival having any unseen butterfly effects, the version of her born in this universe would have already been taken to the Temple and placed in the creche to begin her training.
When Ahsoka figured out Anakin wasn’t going to tell her exactly when the Jedi came to get him no matter how many times she asked (and admittedly, she suspected he wasn’t exactly sure when), she decided to see if she could get out of him what his life was like arriving at the temple so late. Things she wouldn’t have dared thinking to ask him back when she was his padawan even if she’d had the curiosity, because even she wasn’t brave enough to try his awful temper. Not back then anyway. But after years of living in close domestic quarters with him, Ahsoka had long since grown out of being apprehensive of his tempers or caring about the stony silent treatment he would resort to when he was truly angry with her.
Finally, Anakin met her halfway. Well… not even that. All he told her was that he struggled with keeping up with the curriculum since he couldn’t read or write Basic.
“But Ani won’t have that problem. He’s not me.” Anakin tried to assure.
“He is a lot like you, though,” Ahsoka muttered.
“Besides, we’re not even sure if he’ll go.”
Ahsoka wondered if that sounded as much a lie to Anakin’s ear as it did to her montrals. This was their son. Of course, he was going to choose to go when—if—the Jedi came for him.
“We could train him,” Ahsoka suggested when Ani was eight.
Anakin scoffed. “You’re kidding right? Train him? In the middle of Mos Espa? On Tatooine? That’s just asking for trouble. From bounty hunters, the Hutts, the Jedi, and the Sith alike.”
“Are the Sith even active now?”
Anakin’s face turned dark before he finally said to Ahsoka, “I’ve been thinking about it. Since we got here. Since I’ve actually had time to think about it.”
Time. Because that was something they’d always been short on in their universe. Before they could sit with one revelation or crisis, they were confronted with another.
“Everything. The War. The Separatists. The Sith,” Anakin said pensively. “Whoever they were, they had to be planning it for decades. They have to be planning it now. There’s just no other way.”
“We could stop it.”
“We could.”
“Things might turn out worse.”
“They might.”
“So…”
“We have to wait it out and be patient. I suppose.”
“I can’t believe you’re saying that.”
Anakin’s eyes drifted to where Ani was working on Threepio. When Ani could get it to turn on, already Ahsoka saw the beginning of the personality from the fussy protocol droid she remembered.
Finally, Anakin said, “It’s going to be bad. But at least we know how bad and can prepare for that. We can’t prepare for what we don’t know if we change it now.”
And so they waited.
(And in the meantime, Ahsoka would tuck her son into bed every night and kiss his forehead. Even as he rolled his eyes and told her he was too old for her to tuck him every night. Ahsoka would never stop. Because when the Jedi did come for him, and they inevitably didn’t understand him or where he came from or why he did the things he did, much like they hadn’t understood Anakin, she wanted him to know that he was always loved. Just for who he was and who he was going to grow up to be.)
The Jedi came for Ani when he was nine, almost ten. Just days before his birthday. Right on time. Well, they didn’t come for him, Anakin knew. They came looking for parts for a busted hyperdrive for a J-type Nubian starship. But the result, Anakin knew—and the Force confirmed—would still be the same.
Still, Anakin was surprised when his son walked into his shop as he was closing it down and making sure all the doors were sealed and there were no cracks where sand could get in from the approaching storm. Behind him was a Jedi failing miserably at hiding that he was a jedi. A gungan. A queen pretending to be a handmaiden. The beginning of a bad joke.
“Son,” Anakin said simply, even though he knew more or less what had happened.
Either ignoring or not caring about Anakin’s firm tone, Ani began to quickly recount what happened.
“Do you have the parts, Dad?” Ani asked, quickly glossing over the part where he’d invited the three off-worlders to wait out the sandstorm in his home. “And you’ll take their credits right?”
Anakin sighed, suddenly having an abundant amount of sympathy for his mother, Obi-wan and the young Obi-wan Kenobi who, if things went like they had in his universe, would end up training his son.
Finally, he looked at the Jedi, Qui-Gon Jinn.
“Republic credits are useless out here. But the smugglers who come through here are always scavenging for money of any kind. They would probably be willing to exchange them or trade something for them. What kind of ship is it?” Anakin asked even though he already know.
“J-type Nubian starship.”
“You don’t see any of those around here. Let alone the parts,” Anakin replied. “I’ll have to check to see if I have anything that will do. Otherwise the only person I could think of is….”
“Watoo. Yes. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting him already,” Qui-Gon replied.
Anakin scoffed and let out a chuckle. “I’m sure it was anything but a pleasure.”
Anakin left Ani to awe and fawn over a teenaged Padmé, and he just hoped his son hadn’t told her that he was going to marry her when they grew up one day. He liked to think he and Ahsoka raised him with more tact than that, but Ani frequently proved that it didn’t matter what he and Ahsoka taught him. The Skywalker genes were strong.
Ahsoka came home to find that Anakin had closed the shop early, which wasn’t a surprise in and of itself seeing that there was a sandstorm on the way and all the shops and vendors tended to close early in preparation for storms when they came. What was a surprise was when she found a gungan, a Jedi, and a disguised handmaiden sitting at the table with Ani while Anakin played host.
She knew what that meant. Ahsoka had known it was coming. But just because she knew it was coming didn’t mean she was happy about it. Didn’t mean she didn’t want to throw the gungan, the disguised queen, and the Jedi out her home to brave the sandstorm so no one would realize how special her son was. So they wouldn’t offer to take him. So she could keep him safe from what she knew was coming. The Sith. The War. Everything.
But she wouldn’t take the choice from Ani. He would get the choice. Even though Ahsoka didn’t like the choice she knew he would make.
So she didn’t put her surprise guests out. Instead, she looked at Anakin who had undoubtedly sensed her coming.
“Ahsoka,” he stated, drawing attention to her. Then he said to his guest, “This is my wife.”
They weren’t really married, of course. But on Tatooine it was an easy way to explain why a human man and a togruta woman were living out on Tatooine raising a child together. Otherwise, it would draw attention. Besides, it wasn’t like it wasn’t somewhat true. Emphasis on somewhat. It was hard to qualify what they had become to each other over the years in the domesticity they’d settled into. Especially when they lived in such close quarters and shared a room so Ani could have his own. Even more especially on particular lonely nights when they shared a bed…
Their relationship was complicated to say the least.
But no one else knew that.
“Hello,” Ahsoka answered and got to helping Anakin host their guests.
She mostly listened. To a young, sheltered Padmé’s surprise that slavery still existed. To Anakin’s bitter response that the Republic didn’t exist on Tatooine and the Hutts’ word was law. To Ani trying to impress Padmé with his podracing knowledge and the fact that he and Anakin were the only humans known that could do it. To Ani outing Qui-Gon as a Jedi. To Qui-Gon talking about needing parts for their ship to get to Coruscant but not having the proper credits. If they had the credits to spare, Ahsoka would have just suggested they exchange currency, and she and Anakin would wait for one of the smugglers who often travelled between Hutt and Republic space to barter and exchange with. But they didn’t have it to spare. And thus, Ahsoka couldn’t rush them off the planet quicker. Before they noticed Ani’s powers. If Qui-Gon hadn’t already. She hoped he hadn’t noticed already.
(She already knew he had.)
Then Padmé commented, “These junk dealers must have a weakness of some kind.”
“Gambling on those stupid, dangerous podraces,” Ahsoka muttered absently.
“There’s a big race tomorrow,” Ani suddenly said. Then more slowly, “Maybe…”
“No,” Ahsoka said immediately.
“Mom, you didn’t even let me finish.”
“Because I already know what you were about to say.”
“But if you let me race, I can win and—”
“You are not racing tomorrow. Or ever.”
“But—”
“No son of mine is going to do podracing,” Ahsoka declared. Then, because she sensed it coming, she snapped, “And neither is any husband of mine if he doesn’t want to be just as stranded with nowhere to go as our guests.”
Anakin’s mouth snapped closed, certainly in more surprise than actually feeling threatened by Ahsoka’s threat. Ani, on the other hand, rolled his eyes and pouted.
Later that night, after the storm had passed and after they’d begun to clean up, Qui-Gon corned her.
“Your son. He’s very special,” he remarked.
“He is,” Ahsoka replied shortly even though she was very away of what Qui-Gon was getting at.
“He can see things before they happen. That's why he appears to have such quick reflexes. It’s a Jedi trait.”
“I know what the traits of a Jedi are. I know what the Force is. And I know that it runs unusually strong with Ani.” At Qui-Gon’s surprised look, Ahsoka added, “We don’t get much news out here, but everyone knows the legend of the Jedi Knights of the Republic.”
“I’m sensing that you don’t like my being here.”
“Not particularly. No,” Ahsoka replied bluntly. Too bluntly, she realized belated. “I’m sorry. It’s just…”
“You worry for him. You worry you’ll lose him.”
“I know he’s destined for a life bigger than what Tatooine would ever have in store for him. Bigger than what I can protect him from. I knew it when he was born and placed into my arms,” Ahsoka added absently.
“Really? I was under the impression…”
Ahsoka blinked out the stupor she’d slipped in. She hadn’t meant to say that out loud.
“He’s not mine biologically. His birth mother died after he was born, and I couldn’t let Anakin, we were friends then, raise him alone.” Then, “Would you take him with you? If he wanted to go?
“I'm afraid not. Had he been born in the Republic, we would have identified him early, and he would have become a Jedi, no doubt.”
Which was why Anakin and Ahsoka hadn’t left Tatooine. Even when they’d had the chance. Not only did Jedi not come to Tatooine, but neither did Sith. Not yet.
“But it's too late for him now. He's too old.”
Ahsoka turned to look at Qui-Gon. She stared at him long and hard before asking, “Why do I get the feeling you’re lying?”
Qui-Gon gave her a secret smile.
The next day, they found the podracer Anakin kept out back with all the other oversized machinery—the stupid fucking one that Ahsoka told Anakin to rid of—gone and Ani and their off-world guests nowhere in sight.
“What the fuck, Jedi?” Ahsoka yelled as soon as she laid eyes on Qui-Gon after she’d stormed to the site of the Boonta Eve Race.
“Finally, someone who agrees with me,” Padmé said from the side.
“Ahsoka,” Anakin began.
“Shut up, Anakin Skywalker. You’re in trouble later.”
“I didn’t have anything to do with this.”
“I told you to get rid of this thing three years ago.”
“As if our son just wouldn’t have gone to build one on his own. At least you can be assured this one if functional and won’t explode.”
“It’s about to start,” Qui-Gon said blithely and went to the stands to watch.
Ahsoka was going to murder Qui-Gon. She swore she was. Right after she got through watching her nine-year-old son zoom around the podracing course while holding onto Anakin’s hand so tightly that she might have made him bleed if it weren’t his mecha-arm. Sure, she was handling a lightsaber at that age. And fighting in a war just a little older. But at least she had training. Her untrained son was relying on nothing but pure, unadulterated instinct with no refinement. All because of Qui-Gon fucking Jinn.
She had every intention to make good on murdering the Jedi. Until Ani passed the finish line in first place and the first thing he did when he stopped was stand in his pod, find her in the crowd and say, “Mom! Dad! Did you see? Did you see?”
Ahsoka was already running from the stands to him.
“You sneaky, disobedient boy,” Ahsoka snapped when she hugged him and gave him a congratulatory kiss.
Ani only continued to grin.
And then she immediately remembered that she wanted to murder Qui-Gon when he said, “You’ll make a wonderful Jedi, Ani. If your parents will allow.”
Qui-Gon said that the Jedi would give him everything he needed. But that didn’t stop Mom and Dad from packing him a bag with changes of clothes, a blanket because space was cold, and all the tzai blend they had prepared to last him a while. When Anakin protested taking all the tzai, Mom and Dad assured him that with their portion of the winnings from his race, they wouldn’t be wanting for ingredients for tzai or anything any time soon.
“Don’t throw away Threepio,” Anakin said.
“We won’t,” Mom and Dad assured.
Then Mom said, “Remember, you are loved, Ani. Just for who you are.”
“Don’t lose sight of that,” Dad added. “Be the kind of Jedi you’ve always wanted to be. No matter what anyone says.”
Anakin wanted to roll his eyes and say he’d be fine, but suddenly he wasn’t excited. Suddenly he felt scared. Scared of the unknown. Scared of leaving his parents. Scared the Jedi wouldn’t like him.
But only felt scared. Because he wasn’t scared. So he looked down and said, “I’ll miss you.”
Mom simply tilted his chin up with her hand and said, “So long as there is the Force, we’ll always be with you. Remember that.”
But it was only when Dad said, “Go and don’t look back,” that Ani nodded and brought himself to turn around and go to the Jedi awaiting him.
Anakin exchanged a stony look with Qui-Gon, who nodded in understanding before walking in step with his son, away from them, away from Mos Espa, and away from this planet.
He wondered was this how his mother felt when she sent him away to a better life. To train to be a Jedi.
They might not be slaves, but Tatooine was a perilous place. For months, when Ani was a baby, Anakin would wake at the slightest sound, afraid that his mother’s former depur had figured out he’d been deceived, report them to Hutt enforcers, and try to take his son, him, and Ahsoka in shackles for the crime of stealing “property.”
Even when that fear was gone, slavers were always on the lookout for easy prey to steal away with long before anyone who cared would notice. And even though Anakin had a reputation for being trigger happy and a loose cannon with a bad temper. Even though he could no doubt beat a thousand slavers if it mean protecting his son. There was always the slim chance that someone would steal his child while he was unaware, and it would be too late by the time he realized.
So it was with simultaneous aching mingled with relief that he watched his son and Qui-Gon walk away until he couldn’t see them anymore.
“Anakin,” Ahsoka muttered looking up at him.
Anakin held her into his side a little closer, and she wrapped her arms around his chest a little tighter. They weren’t usually this open with physical contact. No one was on Tatooine.
“Ahsoka.”
“We’re not just going to stay here and let our son go to Coruscant to become a Jedi without us? Are we?”
“No. We aren’t,” Anakin replied with firm conviction in his tone.
Three years later, galactic news reports that civil war has broken out on Tatooine with General Skywalker leading the rebel charge against the Hutts.
Chapter Text
Anakin Skywalker’s mother taught him to be kind. Anakin Skywalker’s father taught him that kindness was earned and people who weren’t kind to others didn’t deserve kindness.
Anakin’s philosophy was somewhere in between. He first offered kindness and depending on how the other party responded, he decided whether he would continue to extend that kindness or if he was going to revoke that kindness and reciprocate whatever behavior was thrown back at him.
Naturally, that gets him in trouble when he goes to the Jedi Temple to become a Jedi.
He really did try to be kind to everyone he met when he first came to the temple.
At first, most of his peers regarded him with a wary curiosity. Then it quickly became apparent how different he was.
Most of his peers had grown up in the Temple since before they could remember and had already formed close knit friend groups based on the creche clans they’d been in together. Because most of them had been in the Temple since before they could remember, most of them couldn’t even remember having parents. The few that did remember something had hazy memories that had no particular meaning at best.
The fact that he’d grown up with his parents long enough to miss them also meant he had attachment. Apparently having no attachments was a big thing with the Jedi, which frankly made no sense to Anakin no matter how much Obi-wan patiently tried to explain to him what it meant and the reasons why. A lot of Jedi philosophy made no sense to Anakin and contradicted the things he learned on Tatooine and the old stories passed down in the Skywalker slave lineage. The stories that Anakin’s father passed down to him even though his dad was freed a long time ago, and Anakin was freeborn.
Then there was the fact that while he was technically already a padawan, most of his peers were still initiates. And while Anakin should be in the initiate classes, he didn’t know even half the things that his peers learned as toddlers in the creche. Anakin was spending long hours after his classes were over and even on his days off to catch up, and Obi-wan spent every minute of spare time they had between his own responsibilities as a knight to help him. But it was just so much to catch up on.
Eventually, the differences between the him and rest of his Jedi initiate peers became glaringly apparent, and what was once wary curiosity and guarded acceptance turned to teasing and exclusion.
And just like his father told him, Anakin decided they hadn’t earned his kindness and thus didn’t deserve his kindness. So he reciprocated their treatment, resorting to sarcastic dry quips and mean comments in turn. Because just because Anakin didn’t get Jedi philosophy and was behind the rest of his peers in his studies didn’t mean he couldn’t observe and catalog the behaviors of people. It was just like going with his mom to the market and bartering with the different vendors. Watching body language to tell if they were trying to swindle you or deal fairly. If they were ambivalent. If they were desperate.
If his peers got to constantly shove all his shortcomings and differences in his face, he could do the same.
Between the observational skills his mom taught him and learning from his dad how to be callous to those who hadn’t earned his kindness, it wasn’t uncommon for Anakin to shock his peers into silence with his retorts. Which almost always inevitably led to them telling a teacher or instructor and Anakin being the one in trouble.
“Anakin,” Obi-wan began when for the umpteenth time his master had to retrieve him after he was forced to stay so his instructor could report an incident, “You can’t keep doing this.”
“It’s not my fault. They started it!”
“That doesn’t mean you have to finish it.”
“I wouldn’t finish it if they didn’t start it.”
“You can’t allow yourself to go down to their level.”
“Because taking the high road works so well,” Anakin replied not even trying to disguise the roll of his eyes.
“I know it’s difficult, but your behavior is unbecoming of a Jedi in training.”
“Apparently no one else got the notice.”
“Anakin—”
“Why am I always the one who gets in trouble? Why doesn’t anyone ever take my side? Why don’t you ever take my side?” Anakin snapped angrily, not caring that now he was going to get a lecture about anger being unbecoming of a Jedi too.
“Anakin—”
“All you do is tell me I’m wrong. You don’t get it. You never understand!” Anakin yelled loudly, not caring who was around to listen before stomping to his quarters and ignoring Obi-wan calling for him.
Anakin locked himself in his room and didn’t come out, even when Obi-wan tried to implore him out his room with dinner. Instead, he tucked himself under the cover, wishing more than anything that Mom was there to tuck him in and kiss him on the forehead, even though he was eleven now and had been too old for that before he left Tatooine to come to the Jedi Temple. He wished Dad was here. Because he always listened and tried to understand even when he was chiding him.
Maybe he could comm Chancellor Palpatine. He’d said that Anakin could talk to him any time, and he seemed to be pretty good at listening and understanding his side the few times they’d talked. But also, he was the Chancellor and probably super busy.
So he settled for falling asleep. He didn’t remember falling asleep. Just that he woke up hours later, and when he turned on the side light to rummage around to put on something lighter to sleep in, there was a medium sized pouch and a flimsi envelope sitting on the side stand next to his bed with his name written on it. Not Anakin. Ani.
He immediately grabbed it, giving little thought to how it got there as he opened the pouch first and found more tzai, something he’d run out of months ago and hadn’t found a way to get the ingredients. Then he opened the contents of the envelope and found a holo-chip and another folded piece of flimsi. Anakin found his portable holo-comm to see what was on the chip first.
The blue-tinted holographic image of his mother sprang to life.
The holo didn’t capture the intricate details of her features like his memory did, but it was her.
“Hello, little one. I’m sorry for not trying to contact you before but I know you’re studying hard and didn’t want to distract you from your Jedi studies. It also… took a while to figure out how to get this to you.”
Anakin listened to the message twice. Once to listening to the soothing sounds of his mother’s calm, cool voice. A second time because he’d been so ecstatic to hear her voice that he hadn’t listened to what she said. Apparently they were managing since he left. Staying off the radar of the Hutts and their enforcers. Had gotten into side projects and community social work, though Anakin didn’t know what that meant and his mother didn’t elaborate.
“I won’t keep you. I know you need to get back to your studies. I just wanted you to know that we’re safe, you don’t need to worry about us, and even across the galaxy, my heart is with you. You are loved, Ani. Remember that.”
The piece of flimsi was a letter from Dad, in his careful neat penmanship as opposed to his mother’s barely legible writing and Anakin’s legible writing but not nearly as neat. His father was never a man of many unnecessary words. That wasn’t to say he didn’t speak. But he reserved his words for what mattered, when he thought they mattered and preferred action. He wrote the same way. Not wasting time on greetings or superfluous details.
He wrote that he’d used some of the money from Anakin's winning the Boonta Eve Classic to purchase a starship. Mom had apparently seen it as nothing more than an old piece of junk, but Dad had apparently seen its potential and that it had a good engine and hyperdrive and spent most of his free time getting it into shape. What Dad was going to do with a starship or what he needed one for, he didn’t elaborate on. But Dad probably just liked the challenge of fixing it.
They also used some of the money to buy plating for Threepio and were currently using him as a messenger since no one tended to pay attention to droids.
The last part of the letter was about his Jedi training.
I know it’s hard. I imagine you’re behind your peers who have been there longer. But you’re not there for them. Remember why you want to be a Jedi and then become the Jedi you want to be.
Try not to be so hard on Obi-wan. I know it seems like he doesn’t understand, and he probably doesn’t. But he’s trying his best. He’s going to make mistakes, though. And even when it doesn’t seem like it, he’s on your side. Even when it looks like he doesn’t see your talents. A close friend once told me that mentors have a way of seeing more of our faults than we would like. But it's the only way we grow. So try not to be too angry at him.. I am certain that Obi-wan only wants for you to be the best Jedi he knows you can be. Try not to give him too much trouble. Only too much. A little trouble will probably do those stuck up Jedi some good. Don’t tell your mother I told you that.
Love you.
You’ll be a powerful Jedi, my son. I know it.
Dad ended his letter with the fancy flourish of his signature.
Anakin read the letter multiple times, fixating on different details each time. Like how did his dad find out that Obi-wan was his master? Dad never met Obi-wan as far as Anakin knew. It wasn’t something that had been particularly publicized so they couldn’t have found out on holo, even if they could even get the signal. And news like that wasn’t the kind that usually got to Tatooine.
Then there was that Dad named the starship Shmi, after Anakin’s birth mother. He’d never had much curiosity about her beyond the understanding that Mom wasn’t his birth mother. Not that it mattered to him. Not that it even mattered on Tatooine amongst the slaves and even their freeborn descendants. It was common for a baby and their mother to be split apart and another slave woman to take on the responsibility of mother. Or even a free woman to smuggle a newborn baby out of slavery to raise when the birth mother died. And though there was no slavery on Shili, the togruta had a very similar concept. Hence Shili and the language of the slaves having so many different words for mother compared to the handful in Basic that all meant the exact same thing.
Regardless, maybe he’d ask his father about her since he brought it up. Maybe…
A knock on his door startled him, and Anakin looked at the time and realized that it had been hours and it was time to get ready for more classes and training. But whereas he’d been dreading leaving the room yesterday, now, with his mother’s and father’s words reassuring him, it didn’t seem so daunting.
Another knock, and this time, Obi-wan said, “Anakin. I’ve indulged in your behavior long enough. If you don’t come out, I’m letting myself in.”
“I’m up,” Anakin said.
He hid the things from his parents in a drawer. He’d secure it better later. Not that he was really worried about Obi-wan finding it seeing as he had the sneaking suspicion that Obi-wan was the one who had left them for him in the first place. But… well, he’d wait and see first.
Obi-wan Kenobi really was on his padawan’s side. Contrary to his padawan’s accusations, he was very aware of the unfair treatment Anakin received from not just his peers but also some instructors who decided to turn an oblivious eye. He’d been in his fair share of meetings with instructors, with initiate leaders, and too many meetings with the Council going to task over Anakin.
But Anakin also wasn’t making it any easier on himself in his responses, even though Obi-wan agreed with his young padawan’s reasoning. Unfair as it was, Anakin was being held to a higher level of scrutiny given the unique circumstance of his arrival, and he had to act accordingly if he didn’t want to draw unwanted attention to himself and make a bad impression on the Council. The Council who would one day determine whether or not Anakin could take the trials to become a knight one day when Obi-wan nominated him when he was ready and if they didn’t have a favorable impression of him…
Obi-wan shook his head. Here and now. Anakin would be a Jedi. He was meant to be a Jedi. He was too brilliant and powerful not to be a Jedi. He sucked up information like a sponge and learned at a pace that far outpaced his peers. And while he was still behind, Obi-wan was sure he would be far ahead of them in just a few years. He was thoughtful and inquisitive too. Taking information. Dissecting it. Quick to uncover things that seemed to contradict themselves in his other studies.
Obi-wan didn’t want to discourage Anakin and his curiosity. But sometimes, sometimes, Anakin was a lot. Frequently, weary of answering his stubborn padawan’s insistent and endless questions, he would end a debate by saying Anakin just had to trust that the Force would one day bring him understanding.
Anakin was a lot in a lot of ways, and sometimes Obi-wan begrudged that Qui-Gon had died. That it was Qui-Gon dead instead of him. That he wasn’t enough for the bright, brilliant boy that he sometimes (a lot of times) didn’t understand, but that he’d slowly grown fond of and wanted to see to becoming a Jedi Knight beyond a promise made to his dying master.
“All you do is tell me I’m wrong,” Anakin yelled after Obi-wan had to retrieve him yet again after a class. “You don’t get it. You never understand!”
He stormed away and didn’t look back even when Obi-wan tried to call him back and was already locked in his room and refusing to answer Obi-wan by the time he got back to their quarters. Not even the promise of taking him out for dinner coaxed the boy out.
At his wit’s end, Obi-wan made a decision.
He went to his room and into a locked drawer. He took out the tightly packed pouch and flimsi envelope with the name Ani on it that he’d gotten a week ago. It had come to him in an unmarked box and been accompanied with another envelope that had Obi-wan’s name on it.
Knight Kenobi, the letter began abruptly in some of the neatest penmanship Obi-wan had ever seen.
You don’t know me. But I know you, and I met your master, Qui-Gon Jinn before his unfortunate passing. My wife and I pass you our condolences for the loss. I’ve been told stories that Jedi take a vow of no attachment and generally cut themselves off from any familial and blood ties, but we would be grateful if you could pass these tokens to our son. We have no intention to distract him from his Jedi training but thought a piece of home might bring him some comfort.
I trust you’ll use your best judgment in deciding whether or not to grant this request.
Anakin Skywalker.
Obi-wan had scoffed aloud when he first read it. Why did this request manage to sound like an order that the senior Anakin Skywalker expected to be followed lest there be dire consequences? Then he’d hidden the items in a locked drawer in his room so that his padawan couldn’t easily stumble upon it.
He’d been afraid that passing it to his padawan would distract him when it seemed like he was settling in. When they’d finally gone a blessed month without some fire that Anakin exacerbated and that Obi-wan had to put out. And then today…
Obi-wan wasn’t sure the care package would help anything. It might make things worse. But he couldn’t imagine anything worse that the tantrum his padawan had thrown just minutes ago. So he knocked on the door again. And when Obi-wan didn’t get an answer this time, he opened it some to peek inside and see that Anakin was huddled under the covers asleep.
He fully opened the door and laid the envelope and the pouch on the stand next to the bed before silently tiptoeing out.
Anakin didn’t mention the package the next morning, and Obi-wan held his breath for the fallout. But there was none. It seemed that rather than distracting him, hearing from his parents had renewed the boy's focus. There were no more incidents of supposed outbursts against his peers as Anakin resorted to action to silence his peers’ critiques instead. And just like Obi-wan knew Anakin would, in just a few years, by the time he was fifteen, he was far outpacing his peers in his training.
Anakin certainly still made a sarcastic quip or dry remark or pointed observation but a lot less frequently than before. And being that Anakin had surpassed most of his peers, his teachers seemed willing to pass off the disagreements he had with his fellow padawans as typical, harmless rivalry.
None of that was to say that Anakin hadn’t found other ways to get in trouble from poking his nose in something he shouldn’t have or standing up to a knight or even a master for something he perceived as unfair. Or playing a prank on a Jedi he didn’t particularly like. But Anakin was finding his place among the Jedi, and the Jedi were growing to accept him as their mischievous, troublemaking but generally kind fellow. Even if they still thought he was odd with a bit of a bad temper for a Jedi.
Obi-wan greatly suspected that Anakin Skywalker senior was encouraging some of his son’s troublemaking antics. Yet, Obi-wan still always followed the man’s orders granted the man’s requests and passed the care packages and messages him and wife sent every three or four months.
(And when Anakin was thirteen, two years after the first package, his padawan got up to make the tea he sat and savored most mornings alone in his room. But this particular morning, Anakin instead sat next to Obi-wan after he was sure the man was done meditating. And that morning, Anakin offered Obi-wan a cup.
“It’s tzai,” Anakin said while holding out Obi-wan’s favorite mug.
Anakin offered no other explanation, but across their bond, Obi-wan felt the meaning and sentiment behind the gesture. The trust and acceptance.
He took the cup, and they silently drank together.
Then Anakin said, “On Tatooine, I didn’t go by Anakin. That’s my dad.”
“Oh?” Obi-wan replied simply.
Anakin nodded and said, “My people called me Ani.” Then, “You can call me Ani. Sometimes. If you want.”
Obi-wan smiled and said, “I’ll keep that in mind, my young padawan.”
Obi-wan didn’t use the name often, but when he was feeling particularly proud or fond or both of his young charge, he’d say, “Well done, Ani.”)
Civil war broke out on Tatooine and, apparently, one General Skywalker was leading the charge.
It was all over the news. Anakin couldn’t have missed it if he’d wanted to. For Tatooine just being some backwater planet that no one cared about, the war had a bunch of political and trade implications that greatly concerned the Republic. Not to mention that the apparent rebels, led by his dad—and Anakin was sure his mother was right with him seeing as there was nothing his dad did that his mom didn’t approve whether passively or actively—were petitioning for aid from the Republic to free the planet from their slave overseers.
Anakin didn’t care about any of the political implications, though. He should as a Jedi but…
“They started a war! I’ve only been gone a little over three years,” he exclaimed to his master as he paced the room.
“Well, I certainly see where you get your knack for finding trouble from,” Obi-wan quipped in amusement.
“This isn’t funny. Obi-wan! They—”
“A package arrived from them this morning. I suspect the timing was purposeful, though, I have no clue how your father managed to do so given his extracurricular hobby.”
Extracurricular… Oh, of course. Now all the things in his parents’ communications with him over the years made sense. The starfighter. Using Threepio as a messenger. Dad shutting down the shop and moving out further into the dessert away from any towns or official settlements. Their sudden closeness with the Whitesuns, a family with a long history in slavery just like the Skywalkers but freed a few generations ago.
He wasted no time retrieving the package. It was just a holo-chip this time, and Anakin immediately put it in a reader.
The image of his mother and father sprung to life. They were clearly in a rush with his Dad standing behind his mom with two hand blasters.
"Hello Ani, I’m sure by now news has reached the core about the war here. Don’t worry about us. If you’re getting this message, we’re safe. But we can’t talk long, and we don’t know when we’ll be able to send you another communication."
There was a loud bang on the video and his mother didn’t even flinch as behind them hutt enforcers barged into wherever they were hidden.
“This is where the fun begins,” Anakin heard his dad say before throwing an absolutely insane grin toward his mother. “Are you going to join or let me handle it?”
“Coming,” his mother said over her shoulder. Then she turned back to the holo and said, “We love you. Stay safe, little one.”
The holo cut out.
“Stay safe! Stay safe! They started a war.”
“Anakin.”
“Without me!”
“I’m sure your parents are—” Obi-wan cut himself off and tilted his head before asking, “Without you?”
Anakin didn’t pout. He absolutely didn’t. And he didn’t stomp his foot like a five-year-old either when he said, “I wanted to become a Jedi and go back to Tatooine and free the slaves!”
“Wars sometimes last a long time. It’s very possible when you’re a knight, you’ll still be able to go and help your father’s efforts,” Obi-wan reassured dryly.
Anakin gave Obi-wan an insulted look and said, “It’s my dad. He’ll have killed the Hutts on Tatooine by the time a year has passed and chased the rest into the outskirts of Huttspace by the time two have gone by. I’d bet credits on it.”
(They do bet credits on it. Anakin wins.)
In a year’s time since news of the Tatooine civil war broke, General Skywalker personally oversees the pushing of Tatooine’s Hutt masters into a sarlaac pit. Any slavers that remain flee the planet or quickly fall in line. Over the next half a year, he uses part of the wealth they left behind by the Hutts to sway a bunch of smugglers and bounty hunters to his cause to help run the rest of the Hutts in the nearby systems to the edges of Huttspace before they can retaliate for their Tatooine brethren.
The Republic never does send aid, with the Senate deciding that this is a sovereign dispute outside their purview. Despite that, some planets are sympathetic and they all fall victim to pirating in the following months. Alderaan suspiciously loses an entire convoy. Naboo a shipment of plasma. Chandrilla a shipment of non-perishable instant foods.
When General Skywalker succeeds in taking his planet and eradicating the practice of slavery, the galaxy quakes in fear that the man will take on the mantle of King or Emperor and take his war beyond. Suddenly, Tatooine goes from being some unimportant backwater planet that no one cares about to a galactic player with control of trade lanes connecting to much of the outer rim and home of the man who challenged the Hutts and won. And the Republic Senate decided not to help because they didn’t think he would win without them.
General Skywalker hasn’t forgotten that nor does he plan to forgive the Republic for turning an oblivious eye to his people’s plight. But, to everyone’s surprise and relief, he doesn’t make himself king or emperor. He even retires the title of general
Instead, Tatooine becomes a planet ruled by an Elder Council who aren’t always elders and are always nominated by the people in their community. This Council then petitions to become part of the Republic, and with relief, especially when they see that Anakin Skywalker’s name isn’t on the list of elders, the Senate votes to approve their membership.
But then…
The Elder Council of Tatooine appoints Anakin Skywalker as their Senator, and the galaxy quakes in fear again.
Anakin Skywalker is going to Coruscant, and he’s out for blood.
But first, he just wants to see his son.
“Where are we going Obi-wan?” Anakin asked for the umpteenth time.
Obi-wan might be annoyed if he wasn’t just grateful that his fifteen-year-old charge wasn’t being broody, irritated, and sometimes whiny as teenagers tended to be at this age.
“You’ll see,” Obi-wan answered for yet the umpteenth time.
Anakin pouted and slouched in his seat, and ah, yes. There was the irritation with Obi-wan’s very existence again.
Obi-wan left him alone for the moment as he took them to their destination. One 500 Republica.
“What are we doing here?” Anakin asked, his curiosity once again overcoming his irritation. “The only people who live here are rich politicians and diplomats. Ugh. Don’t tell me the Council gave us another boring political mission.”
Obi-wan led them through the expensive lobby. Once at the turbolifts, he put in the code he was given that would let him up to their desired floor and said, “I’m sure you’ll find it engaging.”
Anakin scoffed, but said nothing else.
In a way, the Council had sent them here. They called Obi-wan before them, and as usual, it had something to do with his padawan. More specifically, the fact that said padawan’s parents were coming to Coruscant with the appointment of Anakin Skywalker Senior to the Senate.
Anakin didn’t follow politics. So he hadn’t been concerned with following the news on Tatooine since word came through that his parents had won their war and shortly after, his parents sent the first care package and messages since the Tatooine civil war began. So Anakin wasn’t aware that his parents would soon be on the same planet as he.
“We trust you’ll use your best judgment to see to this development,” the Council told him.
When they said “best judgment,” they meant for Obi-wan reiterate to his padawan the vows he meant to take and their philosophy on non-attachment. After the Council dismissed Obi-wan, there was a letter waiting for him in the neat flourish he’d become accustomed to reading. It had only one sentence.
I’d like to see my son.
An address was written down along with an access code.
Even if Obi-wan had been so inclined to followed Council’s unspoken directive to keep his young charge away from his parents, something told him that it wasn’t wise to risk inciting the ire of the man who defeated the Hutts. Besides, Anakin was going to find out his parents were here eventually. And whether Obi-wan gave him permission or not, Anakin was going to find a way to see his parents.
Or worse, his parents were going to find a way to see him.
Considering the knack for trouble Anakin had and then seeing that he’d likely inherited that knack from his father, Obi-wan decide it would be best for all parties involved to facilitate the reunion sooner rather than later. He certainly wasn’t going to try to prevent it.
The lift opened up to an open foyer where most senators would have their next level of security but that the Tatooine senator either didn’t have or hadn’t set up yet since his clandestine arrival the night before. No sooner than they approached the door did between the foyer and the main apartment did it open revealing a gold protocol.
“Knight Kenobi. We’ve been expecting you and your padawan’s arrival. Right this way.”
“Threepio?”
Threepio looked at Anakin and startled. “Oh! Master Ani! The maker! Forgive me. I didn’t recognize you. You’ve grow substantially since—”
Anakin suddenly darted into the apartment. Obi-wan heard a familiar female voice exclaim, “Ani!” and by the time Threepio had led him into the sitting room, his padawan was already wrapped his mother’s embrace and said mother was pressing kisses all over him.
“Mom, you’re really here!”
“Yes, little one. I’m here.”
“You’re going to have to stop calling me that. I’m not so little anymore.”
“No you’re not.”
“I’m as tall as Obi-wan now.”
Much to Obi-wan’s chagrin.
“And I’m sure you’re not done growing yet,” his mother laughed. “I thought I was going to catch up with your dad and then he grew seven and a half more centimeters out of nowhere when you were about a year old. I hear that’s normal for a human male, though, and he was relatively young when you were born. I thought I’d be able to at least be as tall as him with my montrals but by then not even that helped.”
That was saying something since, with her montrals, Anakin’s mother was nearly two meters tall herself.
“Where is Dad?”
As if summoned, Anakin’s father came from one of two adjoining halls to join them, and Obi-wan laid eyes on Anakin Skywalker Senior in person for the first time.
Obi-wan had seen glimpses of the man in the background of the holo recordings his wife preferred to send. Even seen grainy photos that wouldn’t have helped much even if they were clearer since the man had often been wearing a cloak to shield him from the sun. But nothing prepared Obi-wan for the man in real life.
He was a severe looking man who easily cleared two meters in height and towered over everyone in the room and would likely tower over most humans and many other sentient beings. He was broader than his son, a little tanner and with highlighted wavy hair from living on his desert homeworld all these years, and had a fierce scar right over and next to his right eye. But besides that, he looked uncannily like an adult version of his son. Right down to identical blue eyes. Almost like the younger was a clone of the older.
“Son,” the man said simply, causing his padawan to grin and rush to hug him.
And then the older Skywalker man didn’t seem so severe when he returned his son’s hug. He wasn’t the man who destroyed the Hutts. He wasn’t the man who practically ordered Obi-wan to pass along his gifts to his son. He was just a father who had missed his son.
Suddenly, Obi-wan felt as though he was intruding on something intimate. He must have accidently projected it to Anakin because the boy disentangled himself from his father to look at his master.
“You all haven’t met Obi-wan,” the boy said dragging Obi-wan over. “This is my Jedi master.”
“Pleasure to meet you,” Anakin’s mother said, and it wasn’t until she revealed it that Obi-wan realized he didn’t know her name before now. “I’m Ahsoka. No doubt you know my husband’s name, though.”
“Anakin Skywalker,” Anakin’s father said anyway, extending a hand to Obi-wan. Obi-wan took it, and the man continued, “You have our gratitude for looking after and teaching our son. And for passing along our packages.”
Ahsoka rolled her eyes. “As if you gave him a choice. You practically threatened him in your letters.”
“You threatened Obi-wan?” Anakin asked mortified. “Dad!”
“I didn’t threaten him,” Anakin Senior immediately denied. When both his son and wife gave him a skeptical look, his voice went up an octave as he added, “Honest.” He looked to Obi-wan. “Tell them. I didn’t.”
He looked comically like his son when he was trying to talk his way out of trouble. Obi-wan found himself amused and got the feeling Anakin Senior wasn’t nearly as intimidating to his family and friends as his enemies would tell and as his larger than life stature and presence would make him seem.
“They were… thinly veiled orders that I was made to understand he didn’t think I had a choice in following,” Obi-wan settled on.
The betrayed look the senior Anakin sent him was worth it.
“And to think I defended you when my son thought you were being too hard on him,” the man muttered.
“You also told me to give him a little trouble every now and then,” Anakin reminded.
Anakin Senior shrugged.
They settled into the dining area for dinner where Anakin told his parents all about his training over the years. In return, Anakin Senior and Ahsoka gave more details about their war. That while Anakin had done much of the organizing and leading their forces, it wasn’t as singlehanded as the news had reported.
He wouldn’t have been able to pull off a rebellion without the cooperation of the now former slaves. Slaves he’d freed over the course of three years before the war officially broke by creating a scanner to find the slave chips and then deactivate them. But then those same slaves agreed to continue serving their masters so their oppressors wouldn’t be any the wiser of what was happening until they were ready to make their move.
Ahsoka had also been just as responsible for much of the organizing and leading their forces to capture important cities and settlements until slowly but surely, they had their Hutt rulers surrounded and desperate. There were also the slaves and servants and droids who served as spies from inside the Hutt palaces and the mercenaries, many of them former slaves themselves, who took messages from those servants and carried them back to rebel officers in the various cities and settlements.
“It was a collective effort, and if the Republic had helped us like we asked, they would have known that I never had any intention of making myself king or emperor,” Anakin Senior said with a roll of his eyes. “It was laughable.”
“Or did you think becoming a senator was a more advantageous position to have?” Obi-wan asked.
Anakin rolled his eyes. “Don’t mind him. He hates politicians.”
“So do I with a few exceptions,” Anakin Senior replied. “I actually hate anything to do with politics. But seeing that I was the one only one amongst my people who knew anything about the broader galactic climate, I was the natural choice.”
“If anyone had told me almost two decades ago that you would be the natural choice for a senator, I would have laughed them to their grave,” said Ahsoka.
“I didn’t know you dabbled in politics before,” Obi-wan said.
“Not dabble so much as I found myself in a position where I had to be aware of them, though I find most of the deliberating inane and self-serving at best.”
“You left Tatooine before?” Anakin asked his father before Obi-wan could.
“For a spell,” the man answered vaguely. He quickly went back to the subject before. “At the very least, though, representing my planet gives me a reason to be closer to my son and give the Republic hell from the inside for ignoring slavery because many of them and the elite who bankroll them directly benefit from the institution despite their anti-slavery laws.”
“You’ve been doing your research,” Obi-wan commented.
“Of course, I did. If I’m going to be a senator, I’m going to be good at it,” Anakin Senior said.
Obi-wan more and more was beginning to understand where his padawan got his stubbornness and single-minded determination from. The only difference was that one was a beacon in the force and the other was practically null in it.
Eventually they had to leave. Anakin had training in the morning, and it was best to get back before someone began to wonder where they were.
While Anakin was having one last exchange about something with his mother, his father stood with Obi-wan near the window as he waited and said, “I really am grateful. For everything you’ve done.”
“It’s nothing.”
“It’s not,” Anakin Senior said fiercely. “Don’t downplay what you’ve done. It’s everything. Not just to Ani but to me. If I weren’t confident that Ani was safe and in your good hands, I wouldn’t have been able to have the focus necessary to free my planet.”
The man hesitated, and the severity gave way to bashfulness as he glanced up and away before slowly looking back toward Obi-wan but not at him.
“I know I… I know Ani probably left out a lot of the difficult stuff. I can’t imagine he made it easy for you, especially with the passing of your master and my son being a… special case and all. But I… we… I’m sure he appreciates it. Even when he doesn’t show it. I hope you can forgive him for not being that good at expressing his more delicate emotions. I’m afraid he got that from me. I wasn’t always good at that. It was dangerous to on Tatooine. Even for a free man.”
“I’m proud of him,” Obi-wan responded. “He’s going to be a greater Jedi than I can ever hope to be. Already, I feel like I’m running out of things to teach him and before I know it, he’s not going to need me.”
Anakin Senior smiled. One that made him look much younger than Obi-wan had initially believed him to be because of how severe he appeared at first meeting.
“He’ll always need you, I’m sure. Hopefully he’ll come to treasure and appreciate it while you’re here. Despite the mistakes you’re going to make. Not like…” his padawan’s father trailed off and shook his head.
Obi-wan glanced back to see Ahsoka and Anakin finishing up and nodded to the senior before starting to dismiss himself. Until…
“Knight Kenobi,” Anakin Senior blurted out.
Obi-wan paused.
“ I hope… I hope we can be friends. My son clearly admires you, and I can see why.”
“I would hope so as well, Senator Skywalker.”
The man scoffed and said, “Call me Anakin.”
“Then please. Call me Obi-wan.”
Anakin Senior grinned, and if Obi-wan didn’t know any better he’d swear the man’s force signature went from dull, unremarkable, and barely there to as bright and blinding as his son’s. But Obi-wan only just had the feeling before it was gone and the man’s signature was dull and unremarkable just as expected for someone with no force sensitivity.
(Years later, Obi-wan will realize that he wasn’t playing tricks on himself when he learns that his friend and padawan’s father is actually his padawan from another place and time. And while Anakin Senior knows that Obi-wan is as much the Obi-wan from another universe as Anakin Senior is his son [I.e. They’re not each other at all], their current friendship still brings Anakin Senior joy. He is as proud to call Obi-wan his friend in this universe as he was in the one before.
When Obi-wan assures him the sentiment is the same, Anakin Senior almost cracks one of his ribs when he hugs him.)
Notes:
No matter the universe and no matter how tumultuous, Anakin Skywalker loves Obi-wan Kenobi and vice versa.
Also, maybe this is going to be five parts... Sigh.
Thanks for reading. Hope you enjoyed. Thanks for all the kudos, comments, and subscriptions on the last chapter. Keep them coming. I appreciate it.
Chapter Text
You either loved or you hated Senator Skywalker.
At least, that was what the Senator before her advised Padmé when she took his vacant Naboo Senate seat. He was brash, uncouth, and cocky, according to her predecessor.
Padmé surmised that her predecessor was one of those who hated the man.
Because she remembered meeting him when she was a disguised queen and he was just a junk shop owner with a wife and a very special son. While he hadn’t particularly been a man of many words, she remembered that he was kind. At the very least, he was kind enough to let three strangers take shelter in his family’s home without complaint. He also adored his family. His son, Padmé remembered, in particular. The sweet little boy who went to become a Jedi.
She hadn’t particularly been looking for the man when she got to the Senate, but they both stayed at 500 Republica. So Padmé supposed it wasn’t strange that they ended up on the same turbolift together on the way to their transports.
He glanced at her but didn’t say anything when he saw her, and for a moment, Padmé didn’t think the man recognized her until as the lift began to move, he said, “Senator Amidala.”
“Senator Skywalker,” she said.
He huffed. “None of that. Let’s not pretend I didn’t shelter you in my home during a sandstorm when you were disguised as a handmaiden.” Then he smiled at her and said, “You can call me Anakin in private. If you like.”
Padmé let out a relieved breath. “Then I insist you call me Padmé.”
“Today your first day?”
“Yes.” Then because he seemed to be the same kind man who took her in, she said, “I have to admit I’m a little nervous.”
“Why is that?”
Padmé sighed. “I’m afraid I might not have made the best impression on the Senate last time I was here as queen.”
“You proposed a vote of no confidence in Chancellor Valorum. Correct?”
“Yes,” Padmé said with a wince. “Looking back, I think I may have acted rashly. I’m afraid my new colleagues will see me as no more than a young girl who threw a temper tantrum when she couldn’t get her way.”
“The way I see it, the majority of our colleagues agreed with you as they proceeded to oust the man from his position. At least you were trying to save your planet. They were little more than opportunists trying to make a power grab.” Then he smirked and said, “Besides, if you threw a temper tantrum to save your planet, I’d hate to hear what they would say about me for raising an entire rebellion to save mine.”
Padmé laughed. Not out of politeness, but truly.
When they left the lift and got to the hanger where their transports were, Anakin went to where his wife was waiting on him. She hadn’t changed much since the last time Padmé saw the beautiful tall togruta woman with copper-orange skin and blue and white montrals and lekku. And when Ahsoka saw her, she waved and smiled before opening the door for Anakin who rolled his eyes and poked the laughing woman in the forehead for her antics before they slid into the speeder together.
Anakin and Ahsoka Skywalker ended up a permanent fixture of her life afterward.
It turned out that she and Anakin had gravitated to the same allies. Particularly the senators from Alderaan and Chandrilla. Two of the planetary systems who had also been sympathetic to his people’s plight during their revolution and sent aid, though like on Naboo, the official stories were that they fell victim to pirates.
She shared a senate pod with many of her colleagues during her time as Senator, but most frequently with the Tatooine Senator. During that time, she realized that her predecessor was right.
Senator Skywalker was brash, uncouth, and cocky.
But in a good way.
He was a man who was straight with his words, let no one intimidate him (not that anyone could given that he towered over just about everyone), was not easily swayed from what he thought was right and just, made no pretense about his intentions, and spoke with a sure confidence that Padmé might call arrogant if she hadn’t seen him cede to better ideas and methods of his colleagues or even hear out their perspectives when they disagreed. And Anakin disagreed with people a lot and never hesitated to make them know it. Even if he could be… well. He could be brash, uncouth, and cocky about it.
“My fellow senators are either actually this obtuse or missing the desert for the individual grains of sand. I don’t know which is worse,” he said once before the entire senate body.
“Well, say you don’t give a shit about the working class people of the Republic who keep our economy going without saying it, Senator,” he had the audacity to say in direct rebuttal on another occasion.
“How do you know what your people want and need when you haven’t stepped foot on your planet outside the pretty senatorial mansion you upkeep with virtual slave labor?” he said casually to another when they were debating increasing the galactic minimum wage and revising their current labor regulations.
So, yes. Padmé could see why people didn’t like him. But he cared about his people and the people of the Republic. He too was kind. In his own way. When you got past all the bluster and the permanent scowl he seemed to wear his expression in when dealing with or talking about his colleagues.
The best way to get past all that was in his own home.
Anakin didn’t just invite anyone in his home. Certainly not without his wife being in agreement about them coming. But Padmé was one of the privileged few. When Anakin and Ahsoka (Padmé wasn’t exactly sure what she did at the Senate every day) tired of being around people, they would take their remaining work home and allow Padmé to come with them sometimes.
Sometimes they got work done. A lot of times they just had dinner and both adults would fuss over her for working too much.
“I have nothing better to do. It’s my job, and I’m committed to it and my people. Besides, I’m young. I’ll have plenty of time to settle down and relax later in life. After my career is over,” Padmé insisted.
“Unless you marry a guy like Anakin,” Ahsoka replied dryly. “You would think with our son off being a Jedi he would have slowed down. But instead, he started a rebellion.”
Padmé couldn’t say that thought hadn’t crossed her mind what it was like to be married to a man like Anakin. She also couldn’t say that if he were single, Padmé wouldn’t be trying to get him to take her out on a date despite their nearly two decade age gap. But he was clearly devoted to his wife—though Padmé thought their relationship tended to vexillate between romantic at times, intimate platonic partners, sometimes siblings, and other times work colleagues. Besides that, Padmé saw both him and his wife as surrogate parents. Especially so far from her own and not able to visit as often as she thought she would as they dealt with the spiraling Separatist crisis.
“Hey,” Anakin said defensively, though it was clear he was teasing Ahsoka. “You didn’t object. You were excited about the idea. You helped.”
“Yeah. Because otherwise, you would have gotten yourself killed without me.”
Before the two could devolve into bickering, harmless as it usually was, Padmé asked, “How is your son anyway? Have you been able to contact him?”
Both adults were distracted from their bickering and lit up at the mention of their son.
“Oh. He’s great. We sporadically sent him care packages before the war started. And he visits when can. But it’s only every few months or so since Jedi…” Ahsoka trailed off.
“Since they’re stick in the muds who think having a life will make their Jedi go bad,” Anakin finished, though Padmé was sure that wasn’t how his wife would have put it.
“You know it’s not just that. It’s about… having distractions.” Ahsoka paused. “It’s about the risk of making the wrong choice if it came down to doing your duty to the galaxy or to a loved one.”
“You can manage both. And there’s ten-fucking-thousand of them. The galaxy isn’t going to collapse if one Jedi has a relationship during his down time. Or another Jedi goes in his place during a family emergency or something,” Anakin said with the usual brashness Padmé was used to. She shared a sympathetic smile with Ahsoka while the man wasn’t paying attention.
“Besides,” Anakin continued. “The Senate is doing a fine job causing the galaxy to collapse on their own despite having the Jedi. There’s a reason the Separatist cause has gained so much traction.”
Padmé would wonder if the man wasn’t planning to get his planet to join the Separatist, if he already hadn’t made perfectly clear what he thought of that. In the exact same way he made himself perfectly clear about everything else to their Senate allies when they too wondered.
“I’d rather lie with the krayt dragon that I know.”
Padmé hadn’t been sure that said more about what the man thought about the Separatists or the Republic.
Speaking of the Separatist Crisis, there was rumbling of creating a military. Just in case. Coming from a pacifist planet, Padmé was of the belief that creating an army was an invitation for violence and sacrificing their freedoms. Anakin, who raised an army to beat the Hutts and free his planet and whose planet still had an army reserve ready to go in the meantime, didn’t share that line of thinking.
Ever a cynic when it came to the nature of people, he thought anyone who didn’t think this conflict would come to a head in violence was an idiot (though he’d said it in a much more kindly manner to Padmé), and he didn’t think the Republic should lie in wait like grazing bantha for easy picking. That said, his primary question was who the hell this army was going to be made of and who the hell was paying for it if they did vote for it. Something the current bill up for debate neglected to detail.
Padmé decided to have a meeting in the man’s home himself to make sure he could be counted on to vote against the bill. Because she could never be sure with him.
Threepio, the Skywalker protocol droid, let her into the apartment as he always did since Anakin and Ahsoka never turned her away. But when she got there, neither Anakin or Ahsoka were there. Not Senator Anakin Skywalker anyway.
Their son, Jedi Padawan Anakin Skywalker, little Ani, was there, looking out the window until he turned around and saw her. And by the Naboo gods, he wasn’t little anymore. The only reason she recognized him at all is that he was the spitting image of his dad without the scar on his right eye or the mecha-hand.
“Ani!” she blurted out, unable to contain her surprise.
“Padmé,” he blurted out seeming just as surprised. “I…”
“My goodness, you’ve grown,” Padmé said as by their own accord her feet took her to where Ani was standing.
“So have you,” he said. Then quickly added, “Grown more beautiful that is.”
Suddenly Padmé knew exactly what the romance books she’d occasionally read meant when they said someone’s heart skipped a beat. Because hers did, and suddenly it was harder to breathe as she looked up at the boy turned young man and he looked back at her with intense, deep blue eyes as though she hung the stars in the sky.
Instinctively, she wanted to put her guard up. To tell him to stop looking at her like that because it was making her uncomfortable. But also, his parents were so kind and welcoming to her, and the last thing she wanted to do was repay that kindness by being mean to their son.
She cleared her throat, averted her gaze, and said, “Thank you,” instead.
“I’m sorry,” he said to her. “My parents didn’t tell me they were having company today. Usually we try to coordinate my visits for when we’re both not busy, and they don’t have guests.”
“No it’s… it’s my fault. They aren’t expecting me, but they usually don’t mind.”
“Trying to replace me?” he suddenly asked with the same severeness of his father when he was offended.
“No. No! I—”
Then he grinned, and Padmé flushed at the realization that she was being teased.
“How’s your Jedi training?” she asked at the same time he asked, “How’s the Senate?”
He crossed his arms and sent her a bashful, apologetic smile. “Sorry.”
“No. You first. I’m sure you hear all about the Senate enough from you father, and the Senate is practically my life. I’d like to hear more about the Jedi and your training,” Padmé said and then hastily added, “You know. While we both wait on your parents.”
The smile he gave her was blinding, and Padmé knew in that moment her heart was no longer hers.
Anakin walked into his apartment with Ahsoka to find his son and Padmé sitting on the couch laughing and talking animatedly and wondered if he’d made a grave mistake when he let Padmé Amidala into his life.
She wasn’t his Padmé. She’d never be his Padmé, and he was more than happy with what he’d forged with Ahsoka over the last two decades, undefined as it’s parameters were and unable to be pinned as it was. But she was still Padmé. Kind. Compassionate. A beacon of light in the galaxy. If a little naïve. He couldn’t help taking her under his protective wing after he’d stepped onto that turbolift with her and decided to have a conversation with her.
He’d expected her to be a confident and strong-willed woman, always as ready to fight as the Padmé he’d known. Instead he met an unsure girl who so badly wanted to do the right thing but wasn’t quite sure enough in herself to know what that was and couldn’t see her own brilliance. She reminded him of Ani. Of himself when he’d been younger and, admittedly, stupid in some ways and hid his uncertainty behind a cocky arrogant façade. So how could he have been expected not to look out for her?
He carefully made sure that she and Ani didn’t cross paths. They likely would, Anakin knew, if this universe followed the same trajectory as his own (and it was looking like it was). But he wasn’t going to be the one to cause it.
It seemed the Force had different ideas.
“Anakin, stop glaring, or they’re going to think something’s wrong,” Ahsoka said as they watched the two continue to talk at the table while they did dishes.
They had servants for this, but more often than not when they had time, they dismissed them.
“As if either of them would notice. They’ve been in their own little world all night.”
“Anakin. Remember how you were with Padmé.”
“I wasn’t like this,” Anakin insisted. “And I was much older.”
“You were nineteen. The same age as our son.”
“He just turned nineteen. I was almost twenty.”
“Anakin.”
“He’s still too young. They’re both too young. Especially with… you know.”
The war was coming. That was something neither he or Ahsoka could change even if they had tried.
“If you try to keep them apart, he’ll just resent you for it, and they’ll go behind our backs and do it. Just like you did with Obi-wan,” Ahsoka pointed out. “Besides. Who knows? Maybe this time since they won’t be so busy yet they’ll just… date a little. Get it all out before… everything. Harmless.”
Anakin wondered if that sounded as much a lie to Ahsoka’s montrals as it sounded to his own ears. This was their son she was talking about.
Ani, blessedly, got a visual message on his comm. He checked it and then gave Padmé a regretful smile.
“That was Master Obi-wan. Sorry. I have to get back. The Council won’t let either of us hear the end of it if they knew I was frequenting my parents’ too much. Attachment and all that,” Ani said. Then he looked Padmé directly in her eyes and said softly, “Goodnight, Senator.”
Anakin rolled his eyes. Ani might as well get on the tallest fucking building in Coruscant and shout his unending devotion for Padmé with the way he called her senator.
“Actually, I better get going myself. I’ve got some work to catch up on, and it’s going to be another long day tomorrow,” Padmé said as she stood.
“Then allow me to escort you to your apartment.”
“That would be great Padawan Skywalker,” Padme said as she let Ani began to lead her out. Then, as an afterthought, she turned back to Anakin and Ahsoka and said, “Goodnight. Thank you for dinner. See you tomorrow at the Senate.”
“Oh. Right. Night Mom. Night Dad,” Ani said over his shoulder before proceeding to walk out with the Senator.
Ahsoka tapped her nails on the counter as they both watched the two leave and waited to hear their talking and laughter fade.
Then Ahsoka asked, “Do you really think Obi-wan commed him?”
Anakin began to ask what she meant until he realized exactly what she meant.
“Fucking sith hell,” he muttered. “I wasn’t anywhere near that smooth with our Padmé when I was his age. It took me days to get her to talk to me that openly. I thought telling her I hated sand was a pickup line. How?”
“Well, I always tell you he’s not you. And it helps that he’s not investigating an assassination attempt on her, I suppose.” Then she cupped his face and kissed him on the cheek before walking away and throwing over her shoulders, “Are you going to sit there and ponder it all night or are you coming to bed, Skyguy?”
It suddenly occurred to Anakin that Ani had gotten his way with women from his mother.
Even with all the information they remembered from their universe (and that wasn’t always reliable considering the fallacy of memory), none of it explained how. Just that the Sith would start a war. They had to make sure the Sith didn’t win. A jedi had the forethought to purchase a clone army to help the Jedi. But there was little else to be gleaned from it except…
“There’s no way a lone Jedi could have pulled this off,” Ahsoka suddenly said one night.
“Pulled what off?” Anakin asked
“Buying an army. Let’s not act like the Kaminoans created a clone army out the goodness of their hearts for the republic. It was purchased. And it wasn’t cheap at that. So where the hell did a Jedi with no possessions and a minimum allowance from the Temple for necessities get the money to afford to put in an order for a clone army unless…”
“Unless someone bankrolled it.”
“The question is who.”
“I feel like we can assume the place where some of the wealthiest people in the galaxy reside and have the most to benefit from is a great place to start.”
Because one thing Ahsoka had learned from actually helping plan and propagate a war, noble as its cause was, was that one person couldn’t do it alone. They needed help. And they always needed help from the inside. So while Anakin went to do his job in the Senate, Ahsoka started their search from the inside.
Most people just believed Ahsoka to be the pretty arm candy wife of one Senator Anakin Skywalker. She and Anakin made a point to let most people continue to believe that, though. Especially when she began her investigation. Because one thing Ahsoka had learned was that it was shocking what people would say around you when they didn’t think you were a threat. Shocking what a sleezy senator—male, female, non-binary, and otherwise classified—would say to a pretty togruta woman while they looked at or sometimes right down the cleavage of her breasts poking out the top of the fitted dresses she tended to where. To find out information by not only what they said but what they didn’t.
What the they didn’t say was telling about who could and couldn’t be trusted when the Clone War finally broke.
Ahsoka compiled a list of senators, aides, and assistants. A category for those who staunchly didn’t want to go to war and would fight going to war. A category for those who didn’t but were scared or saw it as an inevitable necessary evil. A category for those who seemed ambivalent. A category for those who wanted the war to happen because they would directly benefit from it. Because the only reason to want to go to war was because you were getting something out of it.
Anakin had his own list too that they often cross examined and revised with each other. People found him intimidating and tended to underestimate him a lot less than her so he didn’t get as much information. However, people always said interesting things when they were pissed off enough, and pissing people off was one thing Anakin excelled at and relished in.
It took years, but once they had most people categorized, they began to sort them by the richest and most connected. Especially those who came from old, family wealth. And then those who were both wealthy and wanted the war became prime suspects. Some of those who opposed it or didn’t want it couldn’t be ruled out either. Because opposing the creation of a military and a war was the perfect way to deflect suspicion if they were guilty of secretly bankrolling an army purchased by a Jedi.
Once they had a narrowed down list, and it was still quite extensive, Ahsoka began preparations to find herself in and around the same social circles as their suspects.
But before she could do that, someone tried to kill them.
Well, tried to kill Anakin they guessed. Ahsoka just happened to be in the speeder with him when suddenly it stalled and the engine gave out in the middle of traffic. The safeties intended to kick in failed and their speeder went careening into the depths of Coruscant.
According to their security, someone had tampered with the engine to cause it to give out over a certain speed. Lucky for them, Anakin was still an expert at crashing anything he was flying and was able to control their collision. Also lucky that they could both use the Force to cushion their impact. They were both being fussed over by medics and trying to agree on a statement to release to the public when they got word that there had been an assassination attempt on Padmé after she returned to Coruscant from Naboo.
“Someone really doesn’t want you two to vote on that bill,” the head of their security commented before going to triple check the transport they were taking to the Senate later.
“Tell me about,” Anakin muttered.
In the end, they decided not to publicize the car accident as an assassination attempt with the pretense that it might make the culprit open themselves up for capture. Really, Anakin saw no point when they already knew who was behind it and what the end result would be. However, he was determined to be planetside to try to deduce how and maybe figure out who, and he wasn’t going to be forced back to Tatooine temporarily by the well-meaning Chancellor Palpatine when he was ignorant of what they’d be up against.
Ahsoka disagreed but kept her reservations to herself.
Which meant that when Obi-wan and Ani were assigned to protect Padmé while Anakin and Ahsoka were over to check on her, Ani could endlessly worry about his girlfriend or lover or whatever they were calling each other when they weren’t trying to act like they were still just friends.
Ani might be better at flirting with women than his father was at this age because of Ahsoka’s influence, but he was definitely no better at hiding his involvement with Padmé than his father had once been.
“We will find out who’s trying to kill you. I promise you,” her son said to Padmé, and Padmé very clearly swooned under his pledge to protect her, despite trying to hide it.
Ahsoka resisted the urge to cover her face with her hands.
“Please don’t tell me that me and… you know,” Anakin muttered vaguely before continuing, “were this obvious back where we came from.”
Ahsoka watched Obi-wan and Ani bicker about their mandate without really taking it in. Obi-wan and Ani bickering was nothing new.
“No. You weren’t,” Ahsoka gave. She waited for Anakin to sigh in relief before adding, “But it was close.” Then she said, mocking the tone he used to say the woman’s title in, “Senator Amidala.” Then Ahsoka rolled her eyes and said, “I swear her panties melted off every time you called her that in public.”
“And how would you be so sure?”
Ahsoka managed to not flush all the way to the tips of her lekku.
“Perhaps with merely your presence, the mysteries surrounding this threat will be revealed. Now if you will excuse me, I will retire,” Padmé declared before heading up to her bedroom.
Ani was clearly itching to follow, but restrained himself.
“Anakin, why don’t you go check on Senator Amidala and see if she’s truly okay. I’m sure today has been a lot for her. She could probably use comfort from a friend and mentor right now,” Ahsoka suggested.
Anakin tilted his head at her, but before he could protest, Ani said, “I’ll go with him!”
At the look all three of his parental figures gave him, he flushed and said, “To do a security sweep of the upstairs, of course.”
When both Anakins were gone, Ahsoka commiserated with Obi-wan, “Who do Ani and Padmé think they’re fooling?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about Mrs. Skywalker,” Obi-wan replied in a dry exasperated tone. “I do, however, suspect that you wanted to get rid of your husband and your son.”
“My husband more than my son, but it’s good and well that he’s gone too,” Ahsoka said. Then, “Padmé wasn’t the only victim of an assassination attempt today. We were too. Well… Anakin was likely the target. But he didn’t want to publicize it after we got news of Padmé.”
“I assume he’s under the impression that not making a big commotion about it will draw the culprits out when they try something bolder?”
“No. It’s fairly obvious that Count Dooku and the Separatists are behind this attempt whether the Jedi wish to believe that one who used to be their own was capable of it or not.” If Obi-wan had any argument to that, Ahsoka didn’t let him speak it as she continued, “I don’t care about the culprit so much as I care about the motive. Anakin hasn’t been nearly as vocal in his opposition to this bill as Padmé has. In fact, he hasn’t so much opposed it as he’s been critical of the lack of detail concerning how they plan to build this military and who they plan to recruit to man it.”
“Are you saying your husband plans to vote in favor of the bill?”
“I can’t definitively say that he wouldn’t.”
Because someone had been planning this conflict for a while, and their investigation had yielded little. Without knowing who had invested in going to war and why, there was no way to stop it. If there was going to be a war and his son was going to be fighting in it, Ahsoka knew Anakin didn’t want him to be fighting it without the clones at his side.
Anakin’s only reservation was information that they technically weren’t supposed to know. That the bulk of their army would come from millions of cloned sentient beings forced into fighting from birth with no choice not to. Essentially, slavery. The Elder Council would be opposed to it. The people of Tatooine would be opposed to it. They would expect Anakin, as representative of Tatooine, to be opposed to it too.
Anakin was opposed to it. Ahsoka was sure of that. But also…
His son would be fighting in a war soon.
Ahsoka couldn’t say for certain that she would vote no to creating the military either. It was pragmatic with what they knew.
Besides, her son would be fighting in a war soon too.
As it was, Ahsoka also knew it wasn’t going to matter.
“You think there’s something more sinister afoot,” said Obi-wan.
“I know there is. And I’m asking that should your mandate expand to an investigation that you would allow me to give you my insight and assistance.”
“Why do I feel like this isn’t a request?”
“Because it’s not.”
“Ahsoka,” Obi-wan sighed.
“A lot of people think I’m just a pretty trophy wife, and I know you’re aware of the contrary. But what I don’t think you know is that my chief priority is the safety of Anakin Skywalker. Both of them. But especially the senior because he’s not always aware when he needs to be looked out for. I’m assuming I can count on you to assist me with that.”
Obi-wan pinched the bridge of his nose and muttered, “Skywalkers.”
It will be years before Ahsoka finds out the true motive behind her husband’s assassination attempts, and the many more that are thwarted over the course of the war. But that doesn’t mean her investigation with Obi-wan is fruitless. What she does find out is that there’s a Sith in the Senate named Darth Sidious. And if Count Dooku is to be believed, he currently has hundreds of senators under his influence. Ahsoka is just as inclined not to believe him as Obi-wan is because how in the galaxy does a Sith hide in the…
It’s with startling clarity that Ahsoka believes every word Count Dooku says.
Because she knows exactly how a Sith would hide in the Senate.
The exact same way two Jedi do.
In plain sight.
Anakin had known Padmé was back on Coruscant. Known that his mother and father frequently had her in their company. But it was like his parents were conspiring to keep them apart for all that she was never there when he went on his sporadic visits to see them.
To be fair, Anakin never saw any of his parents’ colleagues or friends during his visits. But the point still stood.
(Years later, he’ll find out that his father actually was trying to keep them apart, and Anakin won’t be able to say he faults his dad when he finds out the reason why. “But the Force,” his dad will say in annoyance at the entity that is supposedly both their parent, “seemed to have other ideas.”)
Then, while waiting on his parents’ return after a meeting that ran late, Padmé walked into the apartment, and Anakin was sure it was destiny.
Padmé was everything Anakin ever dreamed of and more.
She was beautiful. Not just physically, though she was certainly that. But she was kind (the brand of kindness more similar to his mom and not him and his father), passionate (that reminds him more of his dad), compassionate, and her tireless work in the Senate reflected all those things.
They were very similar in the things they cared about, but they also had their disagreements. Anakin thought the Senate did too much deliberation, and didn’t get enough done. Padmé said it was because the people didn’t always agree with what the Senate decided. But if his dad is to be believed, the people only disagreed because—in his dad’s exact words—the Senate was so full of bantha shit that it was oozing out their ears and eyes and they couldn’t see or hear a sandstorm raging if they were standing in the middle of it. Let alone hear and see the needs of their constituents to actually makes laws and policies the people will agree on.
Padmé had also lived a life of privilege and relative peace. And while Anakin was privileged to be a Jedi now, he grew up on a desert slave planet where everything worth anything was well-fought and bled for. So they disagreed about the Military Creation Act. She was under the impression that it would invite violence and cause people to lose their freedom. Anakin couldn’t understand how that would be the case when he came from a planet where the only reason his people got their freedom was because they rose up and organized to fight with violence when it was clear their masters had no intention of giving it.
(They end up both being right when all is said and done. Neither relish in it.)
But other than that, they both agreed where it counted. That people who can help should do everything in their power to help others, and that’s what they both intended to do.
They didn’t tell anyone when they begin to date. They couldn’t tell anyone.
The Jedi were tolerant of his relationship with his parents but they would never condone his romantic relationship with Padmé. Obi-wan let him get away with a lot, but Anakin was sure that the man would put his foot down and make Anakin choose between the Jedi and Padmé if it came down to it. And Anakin would choose Padmé. No questions asked. But the Jedi were also his family, as irritating and confounding as he found them and their philosophies at times.
Padmé had no such restrictions on who she could date, but if word broke that she was dating a Jedi, her integrity would be called into question if only for the secrecy necessary to maintain it. Her career might be able to weather the storm. People had kept their careers for far worse. But Padmé was, well, Padmé, and she was also a woman. The likelihood that her detractors would make such a fuss that she’d be forced to resign or have her seat taken was great.
His parents wouldn’t tell. In fact, Anakin was certain they had some idea since before Anakin escorted Padmé away from Coruscant to Naboo after yet a second assassination attempt, Dad muttered with an exasperated roll of his eyes to them both, “For the love of the Force, I hope you’re both up to date with your birth control.”
But it was one thing to have a strong suspicion. It was another thing to know. If the Senate found out his father had known and enabled them, his career was on the line too. And although his dad grumbled and complained about the Senate and his colleagues on a daily basis, Anakin got the sense that his dad actually did like his job. Though, as far as the man would admit, he was only doing it because there was no one else who could at the moment, and he couldn’t just stop looking out for the people he’d help free.
Padmé had much the same reasons for not wanting to tell her own parents.
So they agreed that if their relationship was ever exposed, they would be the only ones to suffer for it and no one else because they’d known and hadn’t said anything. Then, when Anakin was knighted and learned all he could learn from the Jedi, he’d quietly leave. They’d wait a few months and then go public with their relationship and get married so all their friends and family could participate.
But then…
But then…
Obi-wan and his mother were captured by the Separatists, and Padmé and Anakin rushed to rescue them only to find themselves up for execution too. Luckily, the Jedi came to their rescue, and even more luckily, the clone army came to their rescue after that.
But Count Dooku still escaped, and Anakin couldn’t help but wonder if that was partly his fault. Because the man had tried to assassinate Padmé and, come to find out from his mother, tried to assassinate his father, and then tried to have them executed. Maybe if he’d just waited on Obi-wan instead of rushing in with what Obi-wan called that bullheaded Skywalker rashness, he and Obi-wan could have taken Count Dooku together and won.
(The Force whispers to him that it still wouldn’t have mattered, but it does little to comfort Anakin.)
Now they were at war, and Anakin was down a flesh arm, but at least now he matched his dad (neither of his parents find any humor in that), and they almost died.
He and Padmé almost died before they could get the chance to do anything. The war made everything uncertain. They didn’t have the luxury to wait because there might not be an after the war for the two of them.
So they didn’t wait.
They got married on the balcony at Padmé’s family retreat out in the Naboo Lake Country with just Artoo and Threepio, the Skywalker family protocol droid.
(His mom and dad had suspiciously informed Anakin that he might have more things to give Threepio to do than they did at the moment. He didn’t, and Anakin suspected his parents knew that too. But it did give him something to give to Padmé as a wedding present when she offers him Artoo because she’d undoubtedly have more use for Threepio than him.)
Then, early that evening, before their first night together as husband and wife, they made tzai. When Anakin told her how his people married, Padmé procured some native Naboo herbs and flowers and barks for them to try. They spent hours in the kitchen tweaking the tzai recipe passed down to Anakin from his parents, putting more of this, using less of that, and playfully bickering back and forth in disagreement.
It reminded Anakin of when he was five and watched his own parents bicker and go back and forth as they tweaked the family blend with an ingredient Mom found at the market. It’s a happy memory even though he hadn’t known the significance at the time.
(Neither had his mother, come to find out, and she’d been more than a little annoyed that apparently Dad had married her without her knowledge or consent at the time, even though they’d been something of a thing back then. Somewhat. A lot less than they were by the time Anakin was an adult.)
Finally, he and Padmé came to agreement on just the right blend, and Padmé made sure to write down the recipe to save and put in her keepsakes.
(Every time Anakin comes home during the war, one of the first things Padmé does is sit him down to have tzai with him. And when he leaves, she makes sure he has enough of their special blend to last him so he can have a piece of their marriage with him.
[Mom and Dad find out about it, even though Padmé and Anakin still don’t come clean about their relationship until years later. And when they do find out, they cede to Padmé being the one to send him away from home with tzai rather than them after all the years they did while he was a teen.])
Notes:
Thanks for reading. Hope you enjoyed. Thanks for all the kudos, comments, and subscriptions on the last chapter. Keep them coming. I appreciate it.
Chapter 4: Part 4
Notes:
Trigger warning for discussion of sexual assault and rape. Not for the whole chapter. It's in the fourth and last part of this chapter. It's in Ahsoka's (Ani's mom) POV. Nothing too graphic and nothing happens on page, but I have still updated the tags to reflect the content. Please take care of your mental health.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
When Ahsoka Tano met Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker, the first thing he said to her was, “Wow. You look like a miniature version of my mother.”
Ahsoka had resisted the urge to roll her eyes. It wouldn’t be the first time a human had implied to her that all togruta looked alike, but she hadn’t expected it from her new Jedi master.
Then next thing he said to her was, “Is Ahsoka a common togruta name?”
Apparently, that was his mother’s name too, and that’s when Ahsoka registered that her new Jedi master was referring to his mother as though he knew her and saw her all the time.
It ended up being the least of the things that Ahsoka found particularly odd about her master and his family. But that was later. Right then, she forgot all about his oddity when she ended up having to be the one to inform him that she was supposed to be his new padawan and not Master Kenobi’s. She spent the rest of her first assignment with him trying to prove that she could keep up with him and temporarily forgot about the first two things he’d said to her.
Well, she forgot about it until he mentioned it again and again and again, until she finally snapped at him, “You know implying that all togruta look alike is offensive. Right?”
He blinked and then his expression turned bashful and apologetic as he put a hand on the back of his neck. She felt genuine remorse from him across their fledging bond when he said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. You really do look like my mother. I wish I had a picture to show you. But I suppose if people kept telling me I looked just like my dad, I’d be a little irritated too. And… well, me and my dad look like actual clones of each other.”
“Your mother is togruta?” Ahsoka asked, tilting her head. She’d neglected to ever ask and confirm over her irritation with her master telling her she looked like her.
“Yes.”
“And your dad’s human?”
Master nodded.
Ahsoka looked him up and down before saying, “You don’t look like you have any togruta in you.”
That didn’t necessarily mean anything. But sometimes it did.
“Oh. Not like M’atti. But Natti,” Anakin corrected and pleasantly surprised Ahsoka by knowing her native language. He even got the clicks in the words mostly right. Then Anakin shrugged and said, “But she’s my mom all the same.”
“How come you know your parents? None of the other Jedi do.”
“I’m a… special case.”
It wouldn’t be the first time Ahsoka had heard that about her master. She’d heard rumors and talk of him long before she ever actually met him. That he had a bad temper and sharp tongue if you got on his bad side, he was pretty infamous for quite a few pranks and getting into trouble, and he’d gotten to the Temple late. Much later than any other person came to the temple. So Ahsoka supposed it was natural he remembered and actually knew his parents.
But despite his oddness and him being a “special case,” they turned out to be a good team, and he turned out to be a good master. Not just training her to be a Jedi but also the fact that his mother was togruta helped.
As soon as they were back from their first mission, he requisitioned the special rations that she needed because they were higher in protein and had less carbs in them. He also asked his mother about her favorite brand of jerky and managed to get those for her too because he thought Ahsoka might like them. And she never ran out of the special oil she used on her montrals and lekku to keep them moist and pliable, especially as they grew, because her master always had a replacement for when she ran low.
The fact that he knew all these things also meant that she never needed to sit her human master down for awkward conversations about her biological needs. Well, either he knew them or his togruta mother had the foresight to tell him. Either way, Ahsoka was grateful.
They’d been back and forth to Coruscant a handful of times in the first few months of her apprenticeship to him. But it wasn’t until five months in that he knocked on the door to her room, and she looked up to find him leaning in the doorway with his arms crossed and a grin as he asked, “Wanna meet my parents?”
When they got to his parents’ apartment, Senator Amidala was there, and like her master always did when she was nearby or in the same room, the two instinctively locked eyes.
“Senator Amidala,” her master said.
Ahsoka resisted the urge to roll her eyes and groan. Who did he think he was fooling? She was sure the entire 501stand half of Coruscant knew they were more than the close friends they pretended to be.
Her master continued to Padmé, “I didn’t know you’d be here.”
“Yes, Knight Skywalker,” the woman said with a blush. “I was just finishing up something with your parents.”
“Well, who is this stranger?” his dad said standing, and her master hadn’t been kidding when he said he was practically a clone of his dad, right down to the way they crossed their arms. The only difference she could see was that her master’s dad was a few inches taller.
“Yeah. Sorry,” Master said. “It’s been busy.”
“Not too busy to visit your friend, Padmé,” came his mother’s voice as she walked into the room from the hall. “I hear she’s seen you plenty these last—”
Master and his dad hastily cleared their throat as his mother walked into the room. She gave them a confused look before she noticed Ahsoka in the room.
“Oh,” she said faintly.
“Mom,” Master said going over to the woman and throwing an arm around her shoulder, “meet my padawan, Ahsoka. Ahsoka, meet my mother, Ahsoka. Now do you believe me when I say you look alike?”
Ahsoka would definitely have to apologize for getting annoyed with her master for saying that she looked like his mother. Because Ahsoka and his mother didn’t just look like each other. There were identical to each other. Well, not yet. Ahsoka’s montrals were still growing and she wasn’t quite as tall yet, but everything in her being told her that her master’s mom was exactly what she was going to grow up to look like. And the one thing that made her certain was the face markings.
No two togruta had face markings that were exactly the same. It just didn’t happen. Even identical twins had differences. But Anakin’s mother, also coincidently named Ahsoka, had markings in the exact same place in the exact same shape as hers.
That’s when Ahsoka knew there was more to the Skywalkers than met the eye.
“It’s nice to meet you,” Master’s mother said. “I’ve heard a lot about you from Ani.”
“Ani,” Ahsoka repeated and then put together that was what her master’s family called him.
“We’re going to have to figure out a naming scheme,” said Padmé. “Because that is going to get confusing quickly.”
“Well, I call her Snips,” said Master.
“I’ll allow it if everyone calls you Skyguy,” Ahsoka replied with feigned sweetness.
“Funny,” her master said dryly.
“I used to go by Ashla sometimes,” Master’s mother said.
“Why would you need to go by Ashla?” Ahsoka asked.
The woman who Ahsoka would come to call Ashla winked and said, “Sometimes me and Anakin roleplay.”
“Mom! I did not need to know that.”
Ashla laughed, but Ahsoka got the sneaking suspicion that wasn’t exactly what the woman meant. And when the woman looked at Ahsoka and gave her a secret smile, Ahsoka knew that Ashla was aware she was onto her.
So Ahsoka watched and paid attention over the course of the evening. Her master didn’t notice, but that was because him and Padmé kept making eyes at each other like no one else noticed. However, Ashla and Anakin didnotice. They kept looking at her and then looking at each other as though having a silent conversation before looking away again.
By the end of the evening, Ahsoka was clear about two things.
One, that Ahsoka didn’t just look like her master’s mother. She was her master’s mother. Well, not his mother. But she was the same as the woman.
And thus, two, Anakin and Ahsoka Skywalker were much more than they pretended to be.
She also thought that Anakin might not be her master’s father as he was also her master acting as her master’s father (that barely made any sense in her head), but she couldn’t be sure about that.
“It’s getting late. I should get going,” Padmé suddenly said.
“Allow me to escort you back to your apartment,” Master said. “Snips, stay here with my parents. I’ll be back.”
“Sure thing,” Ahsoka responded in a dry, unimpressed tone.
“Don’t take too long,” Master’s father said in an equally dry, unimpressed tone.
Either her master didn’t notice or just didn’t care as he and Padmé walked out.
Silence at first, then Ahsoka said, “The entirety of Coruscant is going to know about their relationship before the year is out if they keep that up. It’s a wonder the Council doesn’t know it yet.”
“The Council likes to think that its members have more restraint than they actually do and so dirty their windows with sand to deny anything is happening,” Anakin responded, not even trying to cover for her master. “Many of the Jedi are in clandestine relationships or have had them. Most of them are just smart enough not to get involved with a high-profile Senator.”
Ahsoka tilted her head at the man and said, “You say that like you know a lot of Jedi.”
“Just my son and Obi-wan, really. Occasionally I cross paths with Master Yoda and Master Windu in my work at the Senate.”
“But that doesn’t seem like something you can observe from just interacting with those four,” Ahsoka pointed out.
“Well, aren’t you observant,” Ashla said. Then, “Tell me Ahsoka, what have you figured out?”
It was one thing for Ahsoka to know something was up with the elder two Skywalkers. It was another to voice it out loud.
“Go ahead. I’m not going to pretend you haven’t figured something out. I was always a lot more observant than people gave me credit for at this age.”
Ahsoka tilted her head at the woman and finally said, “You’re me.” Then she added, “Literally me.”
“A version of you,” Ashla admitted. “From another place and time.”
“How…?”
“That’s not important,” Anakin said. “We’re here. Nothing can change that.”
“So you’re a version of my master?”
“Yes.”
“And he’s your son?”
“Yes.”
“So… Wait. Was I… Were we…” This was confusing. She pointed to herself and Ashla as she looked at Anakin. “Were we your mom in the place and time you came from?”
“What?” Both adults exclaimed and then gave identical looks of disgust. “No way!”
“You think I would have married my own mother?” Anakin asked. “That’s so weird.”
“This entire thing is weird. And you’re doing a bad job of explaining it,” Ahsoka pointed out.
The two looked at each other and then shrugged.
“You’re right.”
“It’s just that you’re the first person to figure something out,” Ashla admitted.
Ahsoka found that insanely hard to believe. But by the time Anakin and Ashla got through explaining that they were universe, time travelers who happened upon the former’s child self and decided to raise him and then decided to try to unravel the mystery of the war in this world that they had fought in in their world but this time by investigating the Senate because someone, the Sith, had to be planning this for a long time and they were likely in the Senate, Ahsoka could see why no one had ever figured it out. She would have never thought something was amiss if not for the fact that Master’s mother was identical to her.
“That’s… a lot,” Ahsoka finally says.
“We know,” Anakin assured. “We have some leads. But it’s slow going. And we weren’t exactly keeping diaries of important dates, events, and conversations in the event that we’d be taken to another universe before any of this happened.”
“Can I help?” Ahsoka asked.
Ashla smiled and said, “Just like a Jedi.” Then, “No. You’re exactly where you need to be right now.”
“There is one thing,” Anakin added. He glanced back toward the front entrance to make sure his son, who had been gone a suspiciously long time for someone who was just escorting a senator a few floors up, was still gone. Then he said, “Don’t tell my son about this. He tends to…”
“To be overbearingly protective, and if he finds out there’s a Sith in the Senate, he’ll try to find him and take him on himself,” Ahsoka said knowingly.
“Well… that’s probably what I would have done at his age,” Anakin admitted. “I like to think between us and Obi-wan, we raised Ani to be a bit more cautious and pragmatic than that. But…”
“But he’s also our son,” Ashla muttered. “Can’t say that raising a rebellion and starting a war against the Hutts as soon as Ani went to become a Jedi was cautious or pragmatic.”
“He’s also the guy that married a senator,” Ahsoka pointed out.
Ashla gave her a piercing look before saying, “I’m not going to ask how you think you know that. But I am going to say that we don’t technically really know that to be true.”
Ahsoka knew that because everyone seemed to forget that togruta had much better hearing than humans. But she nodded, understanding Ashla’s meaning.
“Anything else?” Ahsoka asked.
A pause. Ashla and Anakin exchanged a look, had another silent conversation before looking at Ahsoka.
“If when you’re around seventeen and a woman named Letta Turmond ever asks to see you alone while she’s in holding so she can give you information about an event she’s the prime suspect in, make sure to take Ani and a member of the 501st with you along with a recording device,” Anakin said tightly.
“What…?”
“You’ll understand when you need it,” Ashla said cryptically. “If you need it. If we’re not able to stop it.”
(Ahsoka almost forgets that advice until nearly two years later, the Jedi Temple is bombed. When Letta Turmond requests to talk to her alone, she remembers Senator Skywalker and his wife’s advice. She almost doesn’t take it. How bad could it be? But the woman also staged a terrorist attack. So as reluctant as she is, she asks her master and Rex to go with her.
“Afraid of one terrorist?” her master teases, but doesn’t make a big deal about it after she replies vaguely, “Call it a feeling.”
When Letta ends up dead, force choked by someone unseen, Ahsoka is glad she took their advice.
Later, when she’s in the Skywalker family apartment and it’s just her and Ashla, Ahsoka will ask, “What would have happened if I’d gone to see Letta on my own?”
Ashla will give her a sad smile and reply, “How about I not unload that trauma onto you? Let’s just be glad mistakes weren’t made and everything’s, relatively, still okay.”)
Anakin had been trying to get a meeting with the Chancellor for months.
He forgot how busy the office of the Chancellor might be simply because back in his own world, he always had such easy access to him. The man would stop what he was doing to see what Anakin needed or wanted as easily as Anakin would stop anything he was doing when Ani came by.
He hated to do it, but after months of waiting and likely more months to come, he resorted to asking Ani and hoped his son wasn’t too annoyed. Because he remembered being the go between between the Council and Palpatine and starting to feel like he was being pulled in two different directions. But not many had the Chancellor’s ear the way his son did.
Ani didn’t seem bothered and waved off his apologies for getting him involved in his politics and by the end of the day Anakin had his meeting with Palpatine scheduled for the end of the week.
The meeting ended up being… enlightening to say the least.
And by that, Anakin meant to say that it was one of the most infuriating experiences of his life.
As he knew they would when they found out, the Elder Council of Tatooine had opposed the use of the clone army to man the Republic’s new military. It was slavery point blank. It didn’t matter that the sentients came to being through cloning, they were still sentient beings.
But one thing every slave former or otherwise knew was that sometimes helping a slave did more harm than good. In their desire to help the clones, they didn’t want to cause what were essentially their Republic masters to come down on them. They said the wrong thing or the clones got certain ideas and all it took was sending a few back to Kamino for reconditioning or decommissioning to set an example and make them complacent again. Hell, the threat of it already made many of them complacent. So this had to be handled with caution like everything else to do with this universe and this stupid war.
Anakin made sure during his meeting with Palpatine not to say the word slavery because people who were inadvertently slavers and didn’t like to think or know they were would be… finicky about that word. Instead he phrased his proposals as reforms to boost morale amongst the troops. Individual leave perhaps. A say in where they were stationed. Actual housing on a planet of their choice. Pay. Things that would give the clones more independence and enable them to fight for themselves when this was all over.
But for every proposal and suggestion Anakin made, Palpatine had a reason, an excuse, for why something couldn’t be done or why he couldn’t do it. A reason something wouldn’t work and why he couldn’t waste the energy on even trying.
When Anakin was younger and didn’t know or care to know anything about politics or how the Republic even worked, he might have believed the kind man who in another world looked after him when he got to Coruscant. Who in this world, looked out for Ani when Anakin couldn’t because he was waging a war so he had a reason to be in the thick of the action that was going to be the Clone War.
However, Anakin was not the young man he used to be twenty years ago. While he still hated politics and thought the system was bogged down by bureaucracy and people with their own self-interests, he didn’t become a Senator to not know anything about his fucking job. He knew how the system was supposed to work. He knew its rules and all the loopholes and checks to get around a stubborn and ineffective Senate. He knew the power the office of chancellor held.
Before the damn war if everything Palpatine could do was a Forced damned grain of sand, it would be enough for a sandstorm. Now, with the man’s emergency powers, it could all fill the entire desert of Tatooine for Force’s sake!
To put it bluntly, Palpatine was full of fucking bantha shit, and it was taking everything in Anakin not to say that to the man’s face.
But brash, uncouth, and cocky as he’d heard people call him for a senator, he wasn’t insane (mostly). He knew to say that to the man’s face would do a lot more harm than good to his cause. He knew it would look ungrateful to the favor he’d asked of his son.
So Anakin sat in the office for two hours and bore it and didn’t outright insult the man and his intelligence once. And when their time was up, he graciously shook the man’s hand and didn’t even put one bit of extra pressure on the man’s hand with his mecha-hand like he might have if it were anyone else. And then he waited until he was out the man’s office and a good distance away before he began to storm through the Senate with a dark scowl and a presence that screamed to anyone in the vicinity to tread lightly because he was not in the fucking mood.
Ahsoka was in his office when he got there, and he barely waited for the door to close before he began to pace the room and angrily recount his encounter with the man. She listened with the same longsuffering and patience that she always did when he was angry and managed not to outright insult someone or punch them in the damn face.
“I just… The Palpatine I remember was well-meaning and did everything he could even with the rest of the Senate and even the damn Jedi Council blocking him at every step. I don’t know what could have happened for him to change so drastically between two universes. Like, things are different, but there’s nothing we could have done even by accident to change him that much.”
Ahsoka was silent for a moment before saying, “Or maybe he was like that in our world too, and you just didn’t know it because you didn’t know everything you know about how the Republic is supposed to operate now. Maybe, like most politicians, he’s an opportunist too and just said what he knew he needed to say to have the ear of a powerful Jedi Knight.”
Anakin… hadn’t considered that. If Ahsoka or anyone had told him that twenty years ago, ten years ago, hell, before this meeting today, he’d defend Palpatine and say he was a good man doing his best. But he wasn’t doing his best. Anakin’s meeting with him proved that. But now… now his relationship with the man in the world he’d come from was being recontextualized, to say the least. How many times had the man just been placating him? How many times had Anakin trusted what he man said, no questions asked? How many times had the man outright lied to him?
“Ahsoka, I think we need might need to add Palpatine to our list of people with things to gain from this war. Not just him. His entire cabinet and assistants.”
Ahsoka gave him an unimpressed look, “He’s already been on my list. He’s been on it since the beginning.”
“What?”
“He’s the guy who got the seat of chancellor out of all this to begin with and emergency powers and exceptions that let him stay in power beyond his allotted terms. And when you find out there’s a Sith in the Senate and they’ve been influencing hundreds of people there, you have to consider that the Chancellor and the people who directly work for him are under that influence too.”
Of course, Ahsoka had already thought that far ahead. She always had the foresight into things he might be oblivious to.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I knew he was your friend, and you wouldn’t have taken it serious.”
“I would have if you had told me.” Ahsoka raised a skeptical eye-marking. “Okay, I might have been dismissive at first, but you’ve been in this with me for a lot longer now than I was ever friends with Palpatine. I would have eventually agreed with you.”
“Eventually, I suppose.”
Anakin sighed. He was going to have to find a way to make this one up to her later.
“In hindsight, I’m a little concerned about tacitly allowing and encouraging Ani’s relationship with him.”
“Ani’s smart.”
“I thought I was too.”
“He doesn’t care about any of that stuff, and he’s got us to watch out for him. Opportunists that Palpatine is, Ani’s friendship with him is relatively harmless. Just like yours was with our Palpatine,” Ahsoka assured. “I’m sure Ani’s fine.”
Anakin hoped so. But Ani hadn’t shown any signs to the contrary, so he didn’t concern himself with it.
“I’ve got to talk to the Elder Council. We’re going to have to find another way to deal with this whole mess with the clones,” Anakin muttered leaning against his desk. He frowned. “Ahsoka.”
“What?”
“Did I ever tell you about that incident with Tups and Fives?”
“Vaguely. The virus they’re going to catch that’s going to make them have delusions to murder a Jedi and try to assassinate the Chancellor. I thought we agreed there’s nothing we can do about it. It’s a virus. No telling where they got it or when it will kick in.”
“Yeah. But that’s also the story Palpatine and the Kaminoans gave us. Fives said something about a plan. A conspiracy. And knowing that Palpatine might not have the best intentions we—”
“You,” Ahsoka corrected pointedly.
“I thought he did,” Anakin corrected, “we might need to consider there was something to it.”
“To what?”
“The chips in all the clone’s heads that are supposedly there to just make them less aggressive and more docile.”
“Well, that means we have to get our hands on one.”
“I know that, but short of cutting a clone’s head open and getting one, I don’t know how. Wish we could get on a battlefield. There are enough of them dying to get our hands on a body.”
“Or,” Ahsoka said, “We could do something a little more daring but a lot more ethical than stealing dead bodies.”
(Tatooine may have had a history of being a backwater planet in the outer rim that no one cared about, but it had long outgrown that reputation. It now controlled and owned the hyperspace lanes that currently gave the Republic reliable access into the Outer Rim because no Separatists, not even Count Dooku, wanted to risk the ire of the man who organized his people to beat the Hutts and would fight to the ends of the galaxy before they let anyone take their hard fought freedom. The man’s son was already enough of a handful for the Separatists.
So when Anakin makes a calculated fuss on behalf of Tatooine about the sentience and free will of the clones, accuses the right people of endorsing an army of slaves, and implies that it might make the Republic worse than the Separatists, the Senate is agreeable to do just about anything Tatooine (Anakin) wants to not see them become an enemy. Either alone or in league with the Separatists. Anything except introduce the reforms Tatooine really wants them to implement.
But allowing a delegation from Tatooine onto Kamino to see the facilities where the clones are bred and raised is good enough.
Good enough so that Senator Skywalker can go and get his wife onto the premises. Because no one knows her true skillset and just about everyone underestimates her, no one notices when she disappears. At least, not immediately. And when they do notice, no one thinks anything of it when she laughs airily and says she got lost after they accidentally left her behind because all the hallways are bright and white and all look the same. They definitely don’t suspect when the Tatooine delegation leaves that she’s stolen one of the supposed obedience chips that are in all the clone’s heads and that the Kaminoans somehow neglected to mention to the Tatooine delegation during their tour.)
Anakin Skywalker was not fine.
He was fine when the war first started. When everyone thought the war would last a few months at worst. But it had been a year and a half and there had been so much death and destruction and the Force was always screaming at him that something wasn’t right. That this wasn’t supposed to be happening. That he needed to do something.
The nightmares started a few months into the war. He wasn’t always exactly sure who or even what exactly he was seeing. But it’s death. Destruction. Of strangers. Then of people he couldn’t see but knew weren’t strangers. And then there was this breathing. Like General Grievous’s but different. More ominous. And then nothing.
But that wasn’t the worst thing about the nightmares. The worst thing about them was that they weren’t all nightmares. Some of them were visions. Most of them a lot of disconnected images and feelings that he could never make out until in hindsight. After another crisis. After someone died.
He could manage all that, though. He forced himself to learn how to manage it. Forced himself to learn to get by on less sleep, and considering they were at war, it wasn’t that hard to not sleep.
But then, Mortis happened, and while it was a hazy memory for him, Ahsoka, and Obi-wan, Anakin remembered one conversation so shattering that he wouldn’t be able to forget it any time soon. Even though he wished he could forget it.
A conversation with the Father about him being the Chosen One.
Anakin had immediately rolled his eyes when the man brought it up, dismissing the entire thing as a made-up myth. But the Father insisted.
“One problem with this,” Anakin said, hoping to finally put the whole thing to rest. “That stupid prophecy says that this person would be born of a woman and the Force and have no father. I have a father.”
“Are you certain?” the divine entity said.
“I’m pretty sure I’d know. I see him all the time.”
“Perhaps he acts in the role, but otherwise, he’s no father of yours.”
Anakin wanted to roll his eyes again and move on, but something about what the entity said. Something about it rang true in the Force. The fucking Force told him that the Father hadn’t been lying when he said that his dad wasn’t his dad.
But that… that couldn’t be right.
Of course Dad was his dad. He raised him. His dad taught him how to take apart a machine and put it back together better. How to fix a hyperdrive. How to build and drive a podracer. Who rolled his eyes and grumbled in annoyance every time he saw him and Padmé together and humored Anakin when he denied his wife was anything more than just his friend.
And more important than that he looked identical to the man. Not only did he have the arm to match but now a scar to match from fighting fucking Ventress.
But when he tried to deny what the Father said, the Force told him otherwise, and the Force didn’t lie. It just… it didn’t.
So Anakin went back over his life. All the interactions he’d ever had with his dad, and ones that had never stood out to him before began to stand out to him.
His dad never really talking about his mother beyond telling Anakin her name.
The concerned but unsurprised look that his dad gave him when he was six and telekineticly lifted a plate across the kitchen.
His mother asking Dad if the Jedi would come for him, and his father saying that the Jedi came for him.
His mother telling his dad that Anakin wasn’t Dad and, of course, Anakin wasn’t. But now Anakin wondered if she’d meant something else. Something more.
None of it made any sense. Not any of it.
But really, it shouldn’t matter.
So what if Dad wasn’t his birth dad?
So what?
His mom wasn’t his birth mother either, and that had never mattered to Anakin.
But this… for some reason this mattered. Maybe because if Dad wasn’t his dad and Anakin actually had no father, then what the hell did that make him? Who was he? Where did he come from? What was he?
“Ani,” Dad—not Dad? No. He’s still Dad—said when Anakin walked into the hanger to find the man working on a speeder like he frequently could be found doing when he had the time. Time that he almost never had being a senator while the Republic was at war.
Like always, Dad seemed to know when Anakin entered his vicinity without even turning around to see him. No matter how quiet Anakin was when he entered a room. Before Mortis, Anakin wouldn’t have thought much about it. But now it was just another strange thing that Anakin had never noticed because it had just been normal to him.
When Anakin didn’t answer, Dad turned around and looked at him in concern.
“Ani? What’s wrong?”
Anakin wanted to tell him everything. About Mortis. About what the Father said. About his nightmares. About everything that had made sense until it didn’t, but the words got stuck in his throat. He couldn’t bring himself to ask.
Because the Force told him it was true. That Dad was Dad but not really his dad, and there was more. Dad was hiding something, and whatever it was, so was Mom, and if they hadn’t told him after all these years, then why in the galaxy would they tell him now just because he asked?
(Years later, Anakin will learn that if he had asked, they would have told him. They would have told him everything and maybe he wouldn’t have done all the things he did afterward. Maybe he wouldn’t have almost been the herald for catastrophe.
Mom and Dad are going to tell him that it’s not his fault. That perhaps they had good reasons for not telling him everything when he was younger, but they should have when he was an adult. But they were just trying to protect him. They didn’t want to add another burden to him. Not when he had so much on his shoulders.
But those are just their reasoning. They know, they tell him, it doesn’t excuse them keeping everything from him for so long. Because maybe if they had, then maybe…
Anakin really wants to blame them. But also, he can’t. Because how could they have known even with what they knew? How could any of them have known when they’d all been missing the most important piece to this fucking mess?)
“Son.”
That does it for Anakin.
“Nothing. Nothing. I… I gotta go,” Anakin said before rushing out before his father could try to make him come back.
He needed to talk to someone. Padmé was off-world right now on a relief mission. He could go to Obi-wan, but for all that he loved his old master, he wouldn’t get it. He would try. Just like Obi-wan always tried even when he didn’t understand something about Anakin. And he’d sympathize. But he wouldn’t get it. No Jedi would get it. Because none of them had any memory of parents that they cared about. They wouldn’t understand why it was a big deal Dad might not be his dad in the way he thought he’d been.
But maybe…
“Anakin, my boy,” Palpatine said when Anakin walked into the office unimpeded like every time he came to visit the man. “What a relief? I was looking for an excuse to take a break. Why don’t we… Anakin, what’s wrong?”
His mother always did say he wore his heart in the open. Just like his dad.
“This is going to sound crazy but… I don’t think my Dad is actually my birth dad.”
Palpatine looked at him blankly for a moment. Then the man clicked the comm on the side of his desk and said, “Cancel the rest of my meetings for the afternoon.” Then he looked at Anakin and said, “Sit down, my boy. Tell me everything.”
Ahsoka had always heard the media throw the term around “a mother knows” her entire life. But she’d never put much stock into it.
Not until she noticed Ani coming around less often. Perhaps that could be chalked up to him spending more time with Padmé seeing as Ani’s leave from the war was being more sporadic and when he did have it, he didn’t have a lot, and sometimes he would get leave only for it to be cut short when there was yet another crisis. But when he did come around, Ani was withdrawn and his smile didn’t quite meet his eyes. That was if he smiled at all.
Something was wrong with her Ani. Ahsoka knew it with every fiber of her being. She didn’t need the Force to confirm it, even though a quick check with it did confirm that she was on to something.
But getting Ani to talk was like… well, it was like getting Anakin to talk at that age. Not that Ahsoka had ever really tried to get Anakin to talk at that age considering their different dynamic at the time. And frankly, in hindsight, she was a little oblivious to everything that Anakin had been going through then. But how was she supposed to even know it back then even if there wasn’t the master and student dynamic between them? If she hadn’t been a child soldier fighting a war that they had known shockingly little about? For all that Anakin wore his heart in the open, he was very talented at pretending he was okay.
Ani was good at pretending he was okay too.
Then Zygerria happened.
Ahsoka wouldn’t have even known it happened if Padmé hadn’t mentioned it to her. Trying to say in a very roundabout way that she thought something happened but that Ani wasn’t telling her and that she was worried.
How could Ahsoka have not known that shitshow was coming? How could she have forgotten? How could she have been so consumed in her work investigating the Senate, its senators, its leader, and trying to unencrypt that damn chip with Anakin that she hadn’t noticed that was coming? Then again, it had been over twenty years since she experienced it. And it had been a classified mission that the Senate wouldn’t have been told about until after the fact.
Fuck. It seemed like with time travel or universe hopping or whatever the fuck she and Anakin had done. It seemed like having the fucking benefit of knowing what was going to happen would be a lot more help than it actually was. But knowing what would happen didn’t do shit when they still didn’t know fucking exactly who and how.
Ahsoka wouldn’t beat herself up about it, though. That wasn’t going to help anything. What would help was talking to her husband.
Ani wasn’t going to talk to her. Not easily anyway. Not unless she probed him right. And the only way to do that was to have some idea of what happened. The only one who would have any idea what exactly happened on Zygerria was Anakin.
She had never thought to ask Anakin about his experience on Zygerria after it happened. He’d been his usual overbearing self, continuing to pester her to make sure nothing besides being locked in a cage happened to her. Even if she’d thought to ask, she wouldn’t have dared to all things considered. She could distinctly recall him being pissed that Obi-wan had revealed to her that him and his mother had been slaves.
But she wasn’t his padawan anymore, and after twenty years—had it really been that long?—and being the only person he had for most of it, he’d slowly opened up to her more. He told her about being married to Padmé (Ahsoka had already known). She told him about his mother a few years after that. During the rebellion when they’d allied with the Sand People who would give them shelter and help them hide from the Hutt enforcers and mercenaries looking for them, he told her about how he murdered an entire tribe of them after they’d murdered his mother.
But things like that, those big confessions, only happened when his guard was down and he was comfortable and relaxed and usually without her prompting. So she tried to replicate it as best she could. Waited for him not to be busy. Waited until her warm skin was pressed against his in their bed. The only thing she didn’t do was wait for him to talk.
“Anakin, don’t freak out. Okay?” she warned, and why did she feel like she was his fourteen-year-old padawan again, and she didn’t want to tell him that she’d lost her lightsaber (He later confessed that he’d known about that).
“About what?”
“Zygerria.”
She felt him tense under her.
“What about it?”
“Ani just got back from a mission there.”
“Did he?”
“Padmé’s… she’s worried about him, and I was just wondering if you had any idea what might have happened even if things aren’t the same.”
“I don’t know.”
“You know I can tell when you’re lying.”
Anakin didn’t say anything. Ahsoka pushed on.
“Did something… did something happen on Zygerria that you didn’t tell anyone afterward?”
Silence. Ahsoka didn’t want to ask. She really didn’t want to ask. She wanted to know even less. But she had to.
“Did something happen between you and the queen back then?”
Silence. Then, “I rather not talk about it.”
He turned his back to her, and even if his answer hadn’t been answer enough, Ahsoka wouldn’t have had any luck even if she wanted to pry the exact words out of him.
It was enough to arm her with what she needed to know to get Ani to talk. He might have been stubborn just like his father, but Ahsoka was his mother. Ani was respectful enough of that to not turn his back on her when she confronted him like his father did. She still had to deal with that man, but that was after she dealt with her child.
Ani was as tall as she was now if she counted her montrals. Even so, Ahsoka still had to tilt her head up to look at him and meet his gaze as it was. One day, she would have to tilt it further because he still had those seven centimeters to go in the next few years that would make him definitively over two meters tall like his Dad.
But in this moment, he looked like the five-year-old little boy who shuffled back and forth between his feet when he knew he’d done something to warrant him getting in trouble.
“Nothing. Nothing happened. I mean…” He averted his gaze. “It wasn’t a big deal. She just… I just… We…”
“Ani.”
Her saying his name the same way she always did when she just wanted him to be truthful did it. The entire sordid tale came out of her son like a flood. From going undercover. To their cover being blown because he couldn’t bring himself to hurt Obi-wan. To Obi-wan and Rex being captured, Ahsoka, his padawan, being thrown in a cage, and the Zygerrian queen taking her as his bodyguard. That tracked with everything Ahsoka knew happened during that same mission in her world, and then Ani told her the part that didn’t.
“She… She liked me. A lot. And I didn’t want to. But she threatened to kill them all, Mom. And I couldn’t just let her… And then I remembered the stories Dad told me, and sometimes when you’re a slave, you have to do things… but that I could trick her at the same time. So I… I figured out how if I gave her what she wanted, I could trick her into telling me where they took the togruta from Kiros. So I… I had sex with her. But I still didn’t want to do it. I didn’t. Please don’t tell Padmé. It didn’t mean anything. But I had to…”
Ahsoka would scream and go find something to hit later. She’d talk herself out of storming into the Jedi Temple to yell at the Council later. She would definitely wrestle exactly what happened in their world out of Anakin later. But her fury wasn’t what Ani needed right now. So instead, she said calmly, “Ani. Of course, you didn’t want anything. Ani, she—”
“Mom,” Ani said running a gloved hand tiredly over his face. “Please don’t say it. Please just… I can’t right now, Mom. I just… I just wanna forget about it.”
Well, at least he actually comprehended what happened. Even if he didn’t want her to say it outright. She might be more concerned about him not being able to say it if she just wasn’t glad that now she wouldn’t be forced to say aloud that her son had been fucking raped.
Then he said, “Besides, this is what I signed up for when I became a Jedi. So it’s no big deal.”
He was right about one thing in that sentence. He did sign up for this when he became a Jedi. She remembered when they took all the older initiates, sat them in a classroom, and explained rather clinically the role sex might play in being a Jedi. That sometimes it was unavoidable. That being a Jedi didn’t insulate them from the lust of others or from sexual violence. Especially for species popular on certain markets. Twi’leks. Togruta, especially since they were rarer. Strong young human men with boy-ish handsome features like her Ani.
But he was wrong that it was no big deal.
“Ani—”
“Mom. Can we just not talk about this anymore?” he asked quietly.
“One last thing,” she promised. “Did you kill her?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
And it certainly wasn’t something that the Jedi would condone. Not like this. But she was glad Ani had gotten the chance to do it.
Then he said quietly, so quietly that another human wouldn’t have been able to hear, “She wasn’t the only one I killed. I… It was bad mom. The Jedi… They think it was all self-defense. But it wasn’t all self-defense. I mean it was… but I didn’t have to do what I did. I could have… Mom…”
“I killed them. Every. Single. One. No one survived.”
What Ani had done or alluded to doing was nowhere near as heinous and egregious as what his father had done in another universe. What was similar was what Ani was really trying to admit to. That darkness that she’d always sensed in Anakin, and that he admitted to her he didn’t always have a reign on and control over. The darkness that she thought Ani wouldn’t be prone to because he didn’t grow up a slave and lonely with everyone he held dear snatched away from him in some way.
But maybe it was impossible to be born from the Force without also inheriting some of its darkness. And when they were at war and there was so much death and conflict and violence, it was impossible for that darkness not to feed and grow.
“You need to talk to your dad.”
Ahsoka hadn’t meant to say it. But Anakin was the only one who would get it. The only one who could get Ani right now. Because more than anything, that’s what she sensed Ani needed. Someone who understood what he was going through.
Ani wasn’t Anakin, but they were still alike.
A dark look suddenly crossed her son’s face, and then he rolled his eyes and said, “Yeah. Dad. Right…”
Ahsoka frowned. “Ani, what—”
“I gotta go, Mom,” Ani said abruptly, kissing her on the cheek and darting away from her before she could stop him.
This time, when her mother’s intuition gave her a feeling, she didn’t believe it until she probed the Force, and the Force gave her its answer. Things were going to get better. Ahsoka was going to make sure of that. She was going to find out who the hell was behind this war and what they wanted but…
Things were going to get a lot worse before they got better.
Notes:
Okay, I think I can get the last of this out in one more part. I think I can... I hope I can.... Sigh.
Thanks for reading. Hope you enjoyed. Thanks for all the kudos, comments, and subscriptions on the last chapter. Keep them coming. I appreciate it.
Chapter 5: Part 5
Notes:
I just needed to get this out. It's not as edited as my stuff usually is. I'll come back and do it later. Yes. There's one more part now. But it's short. Like, 4k words or so and was intending be part of this part but it would have been too long. Enjoy.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Unlike his wife, Anakin Skywalker did not resist the urge to storm into the Jedi Temple to yell at the Council member he wanted to yell at.
He walked right to the Jedi Temple entrance and the two Temple guards on duty blocked his way.
“No visitors without an appointment,” one said.
“I don’t care,” Anakin stated darkly. “Now move. Or be moved.”
“We can’t allow you entry.”
“Just try to stop me.”
In the next couple of seconds, he’d managed to temporarily disarm and stun the two guards. People might not know he was a Jedi or, rather, had been a Jedi. But he’d kept up with his training all these years. It was only the only prudent thing to do when he had known there were Sith running around while he’d been raising a son with the highest recorded Force sensitivity in the galaxy. At or nearing the prime and peak of his power, two Temple guards were nothing even without a weapon.
He proceeded to walk past them and into the Temple to where the Halls of Healing were. No one stopped him. Either because they weren’t brave enough or didn’t even know he wasn’t supposed to be here. When he got there, he only paused to reach out into the Force and find his target before storming to where he was.
“Kenobi,” he growled, and before he could stop himself, he’d punched the man in the face.
He was going to punch him again, but Obi-wan was prepared this time and caught his hand before he could connect again. Anakin had been doing him a kindness by punching him with his left hand but since Obi-wan wanted to be difficult, he decided to make use of his mecha. Or, he would have, if the Temple guard hadn’t finally caught up to him and tried to arrest him.
“It’s fine,” Obi-wan said before things could escalate more than they already had.
“He attacked two Temple guards.”
“They must not have gotten my message that I was having a visitor,” Obi-wan said dryly. “I’ve been expecting him all day.”
“Expecting him to attack you?” one of the guards asked.
“We have an understanding,” Anakin said tersely. “He does something stupid. I knock some fucking sense into him.”
The guards gave Obi-wan a dubious look.
Obi-wan sighed, still rubbing his jaw, his beard barely stubble from where the Temple Healers where expediting the growing process after his undercover mission.
“It’s fine,” he reassured.
The Temple guards exchanged uncertain looks before finally leaving.
Anakin didn’t try to punch Obi-wan again. He needed him to be able to talk so he could explain what the fuck he was thinking.
“You attacked two Temple Guards?” Obi-wan asked.
Anakin shrugged.
“And you won?”
“I work out every day and am trained in several forms of self-defense and takedown maneuvers.”
“I’m not even going to ask.”
“You faked your death! And then didn’t tell Ani you were going to do it!” Anakin demanded.
“Anakin.”
“I can’t believe you would do this. You knew what that would do to him. Do you know how much you mean to him? Do you know what that did to him? Don’t answer that. Because you clearly didn’t. But I knew. I know!”
Knew because he’d experienced it and the betrayal after learning it was all a lie. And knew because he’d watched his son seethe in misery at the apparent demise of one of his closest friends and mentor by a run-of-the-mill, scum bounty hunter of all people. Anakin had silently seethed with him, almost breaking the carefully constructed shielding that muted his Force presence and allowed him to walk among the Jedi and Sith alike undetected. Seethed not just because he knew what it was doing to Ani but also seethed because he knew it was all a stupid fucking ruse.
He’d hoped that things with Ani’s and Obi-wan’s relationship would be different enough and Ani’s relationship with the Council less contentious that they would let him in on the whole thing. But there had been little Anakin could do to stop it when the time came. And what the hell was he supposed to do afterward when the news broke? Tell his son that it was all fake and make Ani think he was insane or in denial.
So Anakin had quietly raged and let the entire fucking thing play out until it was confirmed that Obi-wan was indeed not dead. And as soon as he stepped foot on Coruscant after coming back from Naboo and the Festival of Lights, he’d come here to take out his anger on the one person responsible for all this.
“It was necessary.”
“Bantha shit.”
“It was to protect the Chancellor. A friend of your son’s. A man you once expressed gratitude toward for helping to look out for him, as I recall,” Obi-wan reminded.
“I don’t care if it was to protect the Force personified,” Anakin shot back, never mind that he had nowhere near as high an opinion of Palpatine as he once did. Maybe something could get done to end this war with him dead. “You lied.”
“As if your son can’t be accused of lying to me. Or have we forgotten?”
“Don’t treat me like I’m some simpleton, Kenobi. I’m a fucking senator of the Republic. Don’t think for a second you can convince me that faking your death and not telling my son so his reaction would sell the whole thing is anywhere near the level of not telling you about his marriage regardless of what his reasons are for it.”
“I wasn’t trying to… Marriage?”
Fuck. Anakin hadn’t meant to say that part. He tried to play it off.
“You hadn’t figured that part out yet? They try to keep it quiet so we can plausibly deny it if it all blows up in their faces, but everyone who’s close to them knows it. So you may as well know it too,” Anakin said dismissively. Then, “If you get into your head to tell the Council, at the very least give him a heads up and don’t go behind his back.”
“Well, as far as the Council would be concerned, it’s hearsay. You think they’re married, but you have no proof, and I’m sure if Ani were married, a certain Senator would have done her due diligence to make sure it wasn’t easily uncovered. It would be a case of I said, he said.”
Anakin looked at Obi-wan, frankly surprised.
“You…” He trailed off and then asked, “You’re not going to tell the Council? You wouldn’t tell the Council?”
Obi-wan sighed. “I would have hoped you thought more of me and knew how much your son means to me. I just want to see him happy.”
This Obi-wan wasn’t his Obi-wan, but the declaration from this Obi-wan’s mouth made Anakin stop and wonder if his Obi-wan had felt the same. If his Obi-wan had known a lot more than he let on about Anakin but didn’t say anything because he just wanted Anakin to be happy too. Anakin would never truly know now.
(The Force sings to him yes, yes, yes. Obi-wan did want him to be happy. But he ignores it because he just doesn’t have the capacity to face what that meant and to feel guilty for the way he’d shunned the man and been so hard on him.)
“Well, considering the stunt you just pulled, forgive me if I find that surprising.”
“I didn’t intend to hurt him.”
“You did.”
“I know. But I had to. It was my duty.”
“I suppose that’s the difference between you and Ani then. He’ll do his duty—as long as it doesn’t come too much in conflict with his heart. That’s what makes him different from the rest of you Jedi.”
“Both his greatest strength and his weakness.”
“Probably my fault. I always have had a similar problem.”
Obi-wan smiled. “Oh yes. Your antics in the Senate prove as much.”
Anakin sighed and leaned against the bed. “Maybe you should tell him what you told me. About how much he means to you. Don’t mention I told you about the marriage part.”
Obi-wan was the one to sigh this time. “That’s if I can get him to talk me. He’s always been reserved and kept his true thoughts close to his chest, but lately it feels like he’s been putting up a wall.”
“Join the club.”
“He’s not talking to you either?”
“We talk. By the very technical definition of the word. But… not really. Not like we used to.”
Anakin couldn’t exactly pinpoint what happened and when, but he knew exactly when he sensed the shift. That day when Ani walked into the hanger and found him, and he’d instantly known something wasn’t right. But before he could pry it out of him, Ani said he had to go and ran. Since then, it felt like he and Ani may as well be strangers.
“Has he said anything to his mother?”
“He talks to her a little more, but not about what’s really bothering him.”
“And Padmé?”
“No. Nothing. Or, if there was, she hasn’t mentioned it to me or Ahsoka yet.”
“It’s the war,” Obi-wan assured. “He’ll come back around. I’m positive.”
Anakin hadn’t, though. In his universe when it felt like the weight of the galaxy was on his shoulders, he’d continued to keep his feelings to himself and outwardly pretend he was okay all the while he was screaming on the inside. Before he could implode on himself, he’d been brought here. And though Anakin didn’t think he’d ever understand all the reasons why, he was starting to think it had been a blessing in disguise despite all the people he missed and lost. The ache had lessened over time. He rarely even felt it anymore.
Hopefully the Force didn’t plan on taking his son to another universe or so help him he’d tear apart the seams of reality to get to him again.
But Ani wasn’t him. Ani had never and would never have to experience the isolating loneliness and loss that Anakin had back when he was that age. Clinging for all he was worth to everything he had left at the time.
“Maybe,” Anakin finally answered. “Fuck, I came here to be mad at you and beat you up. Not commiserate with you. I’m still pissed at you, though.”
“Hopefully, I’ll earn your forgiveness for it.”
Anakin scoffed before leaving the Halls of Healing, and showing himself out the Temple.
(Anakin is technically still pissed at this version of Obi-wan months later when they get a distress call from the former Duchess of Mandalore. However, he’s not pissed enough to let Obi-wan go rescue the woman he knows the man loves but won’t admit it by himself.
When they first decided to do this, he and Ahsoka had made a list of things they could change and a list of things they couldn’t. The list of things they likely couldn’t was a lot longer than the list of things they could, and Anakin hadn’t been sure he could change this.
But he remembered how sad Obi-wan had been afterward, though he pretending otherwise. And looking back, maybe Anakin wasn’t the only one that Ani had learned how to keep his feelings inward and closed off from. Regardless, the result was one of the few things Anakin had been determined to change.
They still lose Mandalore to Maul and Death Watch, and fighting to get Mandalore back is something they’ll have to deal with at another time. But with Anakin’s help, they manage not to lose Satine.)
“You like to call me overbearing, but I think you might have been projecting because I can hardly work with you looming over me like this.”
Ahsoka backed off Anakin’s shoulders and went to sit on the other side of his desk.
“Sorry. I just have this strong feeling that what’s on that chip is going to change everything.”
“I hope so,” Anakin replied absently as he continued to work on unencrypting the chip.
They’d been intermittently working at it for almost a year, slowing taking apart the encryption a piece at a time because it was encrypted a thousand times across the galaxy and back. They’d hoped to have it done before the incident with Tups and Fives but when it became clear that wasn’t going to be the case, they’d reluctantly enlisted the help of Ani’s padawan despite the risk that interfering might cause something worse to happen.
There wasn’t much they could do to stop the chip from malfunctioning. If it did. But what they could do was stop a Jedi from accidently being killed and stop Fives from poking his nose into something that had resulted in him getting killed in their universe.
They’d been vague about why they needed Ahsoka to act but clear on what they needed her to do. When they got back from their mission on Ringo Vinda, the seventeen-year-old senior padawan had assured them that there had been an incident, but all was still well. Mostly. For now.
But one thing that entire incident had made clear was that they were running out of time, and they were beginning to tread into unknown territory that they hadn’t gotten to in their world. They needed to figure out what the hell these chips were and what was on them soon. If they were lucky, they could unencrypt the last fragments of it tonight and finally make some progress.
“Got it!” Anakin said triumphantly.
Ahsoka leapt from her seat to go back and stand over Anakin’s shoulder, hoping she wouldn’t be disappointed by what they found only for there to be a chime notifying them that someone was at the door.
It was late for visitors and the staff they employed during the day had long been sent home or had retired for the night, so Ahsoka and Anakin exchanged a look before heading to the front door to see who was visiting.
“Padmé?” Ahsoka said upon opening the door and seeing the woman standing in her nightgown and a robe thrown over it with her curly brown hair falling about her shoulders and back.
“I’m sorry. I know it’s late. Just… I needed…”
She trailed off while biting her lip.
Ahsoka smiled at her reassuringly and said, “Come in.”
“I’ll go make tzai,” Anakin said before disappearing into the kitchen while Ahsoka led Padmé to the couch.
“I’m so sorry. I hope I didn’t wake you.”
“No worries. We were helping each other get some work done.”
“Oh. I… I interrupted you. I bet you weren’t expecting anyone. I’ll just—”
Ahsoka grabbed Padmé’s arm before she could get up and leave.
“It’s fine. Now tell me. What’s going on?”
Padmé didn’t say, but did burst into tears. While Ahsoka gathered the girl into her arms, Anakin poked his head in with a questioning look. Ahsoka shrugged, and Anakin disappeared back into the kitchen once again. By the time he came out with the tzai, Padmé had stopped crying but was silent as she held onto her warm mug of tzai.
Ahsoka exchanged a look with Anakin, but he only shrugged, at as much a loss for what to do as she was.
“Padmé,” Ahsoka finally said, placing a hand on the younger woman’s arm.
“I’m pregnant,” she finally blurted out.
Ahsoka’s jaw dropped in shock before she could find it in her to school her reaction.
Padmé didn’t have to say what she said next. It was a given, really, but then she added, “It’s Ani’s.”
Anakin swore violently in Huttese but managed to control himself and hold back most of his reaction until they’d reassured their secret daughter-in-law that everything would be fine and then put her to bed in a guest room.
No sooner than the door was closed did Anakin say, “Where is my comm?”
“Who are you calling this late?”
“Our son to ask him how he could be so fucking irresponsible.”
Ahsoka sighed. “Anakin.”
“Don’t Anakin me. It was one thing to marry the girl. I can’t fault him for that. I did it. But what I didn’t do was get my wife pregnant!”
“Skyguy, she wants to tell him herself when he comes home. Don’t ruin that for her.”
(What Ahsoka neglected to point out was that it was very possible Anakin had left a pregnant Padmé behind in their world. A Padmé who was waiting for him to come home to tell him the news. Anakin had long grieved and moved past his short-lived first marriage, though, and Ahsoka wasn’t going to put him through that again. It does eventually dawn on him months later.
Though he’s long since stopped mourning his Padmé, he does hope that if their universe still exists, even if they can’t get to it, if Padmé had been waiting for him to come home to tell him about a child until she realized he wasn’t coming back, he hopes that she and that child, whoever they are, are doing okay. He hopes they had a good life even with him being absent.)
Anakin stopped looking for his comm and unlocked his computer again, as he said, “There’s so many issues with this situation. The least of which is the fact that we’re at fucking war!”
He went silent after that. Ahsoka couldn’t help but be relieved that Anakin had gotten to the “stewing in anger” part of his reaction quicker than he usually did because it was late and she was still trying to process the fact that she had a grandchild on the way.
A grandchild.
Had it really been that long since a slave mother dumped a newborn child into her arms and told her to make sure he was raised free? Was he really old enough now to be married and have his own child on the way? It seemed just yesterday he stood up in that stupid podracer and grinned and asked her if she saw him win.
The baby was good news, though. It was great news. But also, they were at war, there was a Sith in the Senate, and they were no closer to figuring out why the hell this was all happening.
While she was rubbing her eyes, Anakin suddenly muttered, “What in the fucking universe…”
“Anakin. Can we do this to—” Ahsoka cut herself when she looked up and saw Anakin staring in stunned silence at his screen and his normally tanned skin had gone extremely pale. “Anakin?”
“These aren’t anti-aggression chips.”
Ahsoka made her way to look at the screen over Anakin’s shoulder. There was a long list of orders, but one in particular that Anakin had highlighted.
Order 66: Under this directive, any and all Jedi leadership must be executed for treason against the Republic. Any soldier that does not comply with the order will also be executed for treason.
“That’s it,” Ahsoka said, managing to put the pieces together despite the stunning revelation. “That’s the why of the war. It’s so obvious now I don’t know why we didn’t think of it before. The Sith… They started this war to kill the Jedi.”
“And whoever they are purchased the clone army to do it.”
“The question is what are they waiting on? Why haven’t they pulled the trigger?”
“I think the more important question is how long will it be before they do pull the trigger and what can we do to stop it?”
“If we figure out why, we can figure out how long before they do,” Ahsoka muttered. “But you’re right. We do need to stop it in the meantime. Question is how do we get chips out of millions of clone’s heads.”
“We don’t. It would be impossible and way to obvious. But I might be able to build some sort of transmission scrambler or deactivator to remotely prevent the chip from forcing the clones to follow the order.”
“Like the one you built to deactivate the slave chips and scramble the frequency of the detonators,” Ahsoka said.
“It’s similar engineering.”
“It still took you months to build.”
“Well, we better pray to the Force we have months.”
Ahsoka hoped they did. Force, she really hoped they did.
“We have to find some way to warn the Jedi,” Ahsoka added.
“So they can call back all their Jedi and alert the Sith that’s likely in the Senate that they’re on to them and make them call the order early? Ahsoka, our son is out there with those clones.”
“I know that. But we can’t do nothing while you’re building your deactivator.” Before Anakin could say anything to that, Ahsoka said, “I’m going to start coming up with some… contingencies.”
“Contingencies.”
“Yeah. I think I’ve got a handle on who we can trust to do something when it comes down to it. Who can be trusted to help us out. Who can be trusted to keep us safe if we have to leave in an emergency…”
“Why does it sound like…”
Like you’re talking about building another rebellion, he sent across their bond.
I’m not. I’m building us an escape plan. But…
Anakin nodded in understanding.
A rebellion might be exactly what it came to if the order came down to exeute all the Jedi. But better that go unsaid for right now. Especially with their pregnant daughter-in-law in the next room.
Ahsoka sighed and glanced at the chrono.
“Looks like we’re not getting any sleep tonight.”
“I’ll go put on the caf,” Anakin said.
Anakin was different from the man she married a little over three years ago.
That man was still there, Padmé knew. She saw it in the adoring way he still looked at her. When he wasn’t afraid something was going to happen to her. The way he smiled. When she could get him to smile nowadays. The passionate way he expressed himself. When she could get him to express himself beyond blowing up in anger or frustration.
She always worried that she’d lose Anakin to the war. But not like this. Not like…
Padmé had been nervous to tell him about the baby. They were in the middle of a war. The Republic was crumbling around them. When the Jedi found out he was the father, they would probably expel him. The scandal might end her career but…
But she’d hoped he’d be happy about the news. She was prepared for him to be upset like she was when she found out. But she hoped… she hoped he could not worry about that and be happy about the baby. A manifestation of their love, no matter how unplanned and unexpected.
And he was happy.
After being stunned, a smile broke onto his face. He picked her up and kissed her. Told her it was the happiest day of his life, and they went home and spent the rest of the evening making plans. About going to Naboo to have the baby. About getting his parents to come if he could pull his mother away from her relief work and his father away from shouting at other senators about how stupid they were.
She fell asleep in his arms with their baby kicking, and for the first time in months was sure everything was going to be fine.
Then the nightmares started, and he became convinced she was going to die in childbirth. He’d had nightmares all throughout the war. Some of them just bad dreams but others of them were of things to come. Things he wanted to stop but couldn’t comprehend or understand until in hindsight. Of strangers. Of Jedi. Of people he cared about. But never her. Dreams of her had only ever been sweet. Until now.
She went to her medic, one she chose for their discretion in these matters, and they triple checked everything. Padmé was fine. Her pregnancy was normal. The baby was fine. Everything indicated a relatively easy labor to come. But her husband’s fears couldn’t be allayed. He was convinced she was going to die if he didn’t do something.
And Anakin was kind and passionate and straightforward with a strong sense of right and wrong and justice but…
But sometimes Padmé feared for him. Sometimes she feared what would happen if someone pushed just the right button, made him just desperate enough… Like he ended up confessing to her he’d been on Zygerria. How he choked the woman to death in her sleep after he tricked the information out her that he needed, and proceeded to kill anyone who got in his way as he escaped the palace, went to retrieve his padawan, and headed to free Obi-wan, Rex, and the rest of the Kiros togruta. Men and women. There hadn’t been any children. But he had killed some of those he’d sworn to protect in their brainwashed zeal to protect and defend their masters.
“It’s like… It’s like I wasn’t me. I mean, I was me. I remember it. I remember doing it. But it was like I wasn’t in control of my own body. All I could think was I needed to escape. And I needed to do it now.”
She’d had the fleeting thought that they were lucky he was on their side. That they were lucky that Anakin was so good and wanted to be good. Because it would be a dark galaxy if the wrong person convinced Anakin to do the wrong thing. It could be catastrophic.
And then…
Then Anakin said, “I found a way to save you.”
“Save me?”
“From my nightmares.”
“Is that what's bothering you?”
“I won't lose you, Padme.”
“I'm not going to die in childbirth, Ani. I promise you.”
“No, I promise you.”
Anakin’s declarations and determinations to protect Padmé normally brought her peace and comfort, but something about it at that moment sounded foreboding.
She needed help. She needed someone to talk to Anakin, but he wouldn’t talk to anyone. Not to anyone except Palpatine, and Palpatine… Padmé had her own issues with him. Not that Anakin would hear any of it from her.
If he could talk to Palpatine it was only fair that Padmé be allowed to get outside help from somewhere. She’d only promised not to get Obi-wan involved even though it seemed the natural thing to do since his nightmares were a Force thing.
With that, Padmé decided that she’d ask for her husband’s forgiveness at a later date, and made her way down a few floors to the apartment belonging to her in-laws. A servant let her in without questioning what she needed just like they always didn’t when they saw her at the door.
When her father-in-law walked out the hall, presumably coming from his office, he immediately said with a roll of his eyes, “Please don’t tell me Palpatine made another asinine amendment to the constitution that’s supposed to make it easier for this war to end but really going to make it harder.”
Palpatine and the scary amount of power he’d accumulated was something to talk about at another time.
“It’s about Ani.”
Anakin Senior frowned. “Ani.”
“I’m afraid…”
“Afraid of what? Did he do something to you?”
“No. No! He’d never hurt me. You raised him better than that.”
“I know but…”
“But what…?”
“We haven’t talked much in the last year or so. So I can’t say I know who he is anymore.”
“Well he needs to talk to someone. I don’t know if you can help since it’s a Force thing but…” Padmé hesitated.
“But what?”
“He’s convinced I’m going to die in childbirth. He says he’s found a way to save me, and I don’t know what he found, but I’m afraid of it. I’m afraid it’s going to make him do something like what happened on Zygerria but worse.”
Anakin Senior frowned.
“Zygerria?”
“He didn’t tell you?”
“Ahsoka told me he killed the queen. Can’t say I fault him for that or that I wouldn’t have given the circumstances and the opportunity.”
“That’s not all.”
Her father-in-law frowned and said, “Tell me everything. Don’t leave anything out, even if Ani told you not to say anything.”
The darkness was an old friend of Anakin Skywalker’s.
Since he could remember, it was always there, lying in wait to be fed. There’d been plenty for it to feast on when he was a slave on Tatooine with his mother. But he hadn’t known how to access his power in the Force then. During his padawanship, surrounded by Jedi, he’d known how to access his power but it had nothing to feast on.
Then his mother died.
Then the war came.
And despite his best efforts, that darkness, his oldest friend. A faithful companion even. There and eager to be used when he called upon it. It quietly festered. It grew. With every loss, with every tragedy, with every Crisis, it was there to embrace him, to numb the pain, to drive him forward when it seemed the light only brought him more pain. When its warmth burned.
It was an illusion, Anakin figured out later. To make him feel like everything was okay when it wasn’t. A temporary bandage to issues that had needed to be dealt with and a permanent solution found. The darkness just made you stop feeling it while the problems got worse.
He’d learned to tame it over the years. Sometimes the sweet relieve of the cool night was needed to recharge before facing the day again. But allowing it to swallow you, getting drunk on the ecstasy of its hypnotic power… that was the type of darkness that the Jedi were afraid of and warned against. So afraid of it that they hadn’t known how to deal with a child born of the Force and would inevitably be born, too, with its darkness.
Ani wasn’t him. Ani didn’t grow up a slave. Ani didn’t grow up with a mother and without a father and without knowing he was loved. But he was like him, and in hindsight Anakin supposed it was only natural that the darkness would eventually find a different way to grow in his son. Also born of the Force and naturally born, too, with its darkness.
Anakin had promised he wouldn’t fail his son again after that first time. On Tatooine. When he’d learned what being a slave meant in a cruel way because Anakin hadn’t prepared him for it. But now he’d failed again by not preparing Ani for the reality of people like them, and now Anakin was the only one who could fix it. Because he was the only one who got it.
So Anakin waited for Ani to come to Padmé’s apartment after asking his daughter-in-law to comm him there.
He felt Ani coming long before he heard the sound of Ani’s speeder arriving on the platform off the veranda. Heard him walk into the dark apartment calling Padmé’s name only to turn on the light and find Anakin waiting for him.
“Dad,” Ani said in surprise and then frowned and crossed his arms. “What are you doing here? Where’s Padmé?”
“Padmé is spending the evening with your mother. We need to talk.”
Ani sighed. “Dad. I don’t have time for this. Between Palpatine and the Council.”
“You can tell them both where they can shove their agendas. You’re making time to talk if I have to physically fight you,” Anakin warned.
Ani scoffed. “Really, Dad? You’re going to fight the Jedi Knight?”
“Did Obi-wan tell you I beat two Temple guards singlehandedly?”
“Ahsoka could beat the Temple guards,” Ani said as her turned to leave. “I don’t have time for th—”
Anakin then did something he had done limitedly during the Tatooine war, but not much since. Still, when he tapped into the Force and willed it to lend him its power, it came to him as naturally as existing. Then he willed the door that Anakin had been about to walk through shut before he could pass it.
“What the—” Ani said and tried to make the door open only for it not to budge under Anakin’s power. “How are you doing this?”
Anakin smirked and went to stand in front of his son and asked, “Still think your old man can’t take on the Jedi Knight?”
And then…
Because his fucking son was his fucking son. Reckless. And brash. And determined. And sometimes so fucking stupid. His son actually tried. Being that Anakin had been doing the maneuvers Ani was trying to use to take him down before he was even born, Anakin used one of many possible maneuvers to combat him and then used a trick he was sure his son hadn’t learned yet to put him flat on his back.
“Fuck,” Ani muttered rubbing his head as he sat up to glare at Anakin towering over him. “Where did you learn that?” A beat. “Did you use the Force earlier?” Another beat. “Shit. Are you a Jedi?”
Time to come clean. At least partially.
“I used to be. A long time ago. But we can discuss that later. What’s going on? Padmé said you’ve been having nightmares.”
“No,” Ani snapped. “We’re discussing it now. You can’t just tell me you used to be a Jedi and then just gloss over it!"
“Ani.”
“You’ve been lying. This whole time you lied to me. For what? You and mom got shits and giggles out of kidnapping the child of slave and raising me as your own!”
“Kidnapping the—What are you talking about, son?”
“Stop. Calling me that! I’m not your son! I’m not! The Father told me on Mortis, and he didn’t lie! I’m not… I’m not… Fuck,” Ani said, putting his arm over his eyes.
“Son.”
The entire story came. It started with the prophetic images and nightmares he’d been having all throughout the war (Anakin had hoped Ani wouldn’t develop that particular curse). Then Mortis and the Father saying he was the Chosen one and how he tried to write it off as a myth that couldn’t possibly be true because he had a father and the Chosen one wasn’t supposed to but Ani knowing it was true because the Force didn’t lie (Anakin, for once, wished that it had). To confiding in Palpatine when he couldn’t bring himself to ask Ahsoka or himself about it. Killing Count Dooku at Palpatine’s request. His nightmares of Padmé dying. Palpatine appointing him to the Council. The Council allowing it without making him a master so he could spy on him. Learning a Sith Legend about how to keep people from dying from Palpatine.
“I just… I feel like I have to please so many people and live up to so many expectations but I can’t do it all. I can’t, Dad. I just… I can’t.”
Anakin had many questions. The most pressing of them being why the hell Ani hadn’t just come to him before. But he supposed it was for the same reason he never went to anyone. The same reason his son was tearing apart at the seams now.
He hadn’t wanted to disappoint anyone.
“Son. Ani. Anakin,” Anakin said and just as he’d hoping, calling Ani by his full name got his attention. “Remember what I told you when you first went to become a Jedi?”
“What?” Ani replied sourly.
“Be the kind of Jedi you’ve always wanted to be,” Anakin stated. “I told you that because I wish someone had told me that back when I went to become a Jedi and only wanted to help people. Just like you.”
“But I have to… I can’t…”
“Anakin, you never needed all these… these titles and accolades or approval to be a good Jedi. Hell, you don’t even need to be a Jedi to help people.”
“But the war…”
“Fuck this stupid, pointless war. You are enough, my son. You’ve always been enough. Exactly as you are.”
“Even the bad temper?”
Anakin huffed a laugh and said, “Even the bad temper. Although we should probably work on learning to control that. People like you and I… we can’t help that we feel so much. But it’s dangerous without a proper channel.”
“How do you channel it?”
“Yelling at other senators and calling them all idiots.”
“Yeah… I’ll pass on that.”
“That’s what I said at your age, but it is a shockingly good and entertaining outlet. Wouldn’t have ever thought that at your age, but I haven’t killed anyone in a long time, so….” Anakin shrugged. “And your mother has always been a great balancing and neutralizing personality for me.”
“By the way, Dad. What… What are we?”
“The literal children of the Force if our birth mothers are to be believed.”
“That… Answers everything and nothing all at once.”
“I’m going to tell you everything. I promise,” Anakin assured as he stood and offered his son a hand. As he helped him up, he asked, “But first, one question? What’s this fucking nonsense Palpatine’s put in your head? Has he been telling you since before or after he asked you to spy on the Jedi Council?”
“What? Palpatine didn’t ask me to spy on—”
Anakin raised an eyebrow as it dawned on Ani.
“Fuck. Dad! I don’t know what to do! I don’t know who to trust but… I think… I think he can show me how to save Padmé.”
“Palpatine’s just an old man full of bantha shit. If you’re going to trust anyone, trust me and take anything that man tells you with a grain of salt. He tried to do the same thing to me where I came from as if he hadn’t garnered enough fucking power to become an absolute dictator by the time—”
Fucking shit.
“Dad. What are you talking about? What do you mean where you come from?”
“Anakin. That power Palpatine told you could stop people from dying. He told you it was a Sith legend?”
“Yes. He’s into that kind of stuff. You know. Force philosophy and stuff. It’s not the first time he’s brought this stuff up before.”
The Naboo Invasion.
The war.
The Sith in the Senate.
The clone army and the chips.
Order 66.
Then invasion of Coruscant that no one seemed to think was suspicious and made absolutely no sense except him.
Palpatine telling his son to kill Count Dooku.
Palpatine knowing a Sith legend.
Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.
“Dad, what’s—”
“We are going to talk, and I’ll tell you everything,” Anakin declared sternly, gripping his son’s arm. “I promise. But right now, I need you to trust me. Stay. Here. I’ll send Padmé back up. The two of you need to get off planet.”
“Get off planet why?”
“Because you, her, and that baby are in danger on Coruscant right now. I think that’s what your vision means.”
“Dad.”
But Anakin was already walking away. He only paused to look into identical blue eyes and say, “Stay the hell away from Palpatine.”
Anakin rushed down to his own apartment where Ahsoka was waiting with Padmé.
They both jumped up when they saw him.
“How’d it go?” Ahsoka asked.
Anakin waved her off. “We can talk about it later. Padmé, call your security down to escort you back to your apartment. Ani is there waiting. You both need to get off planet. Now.”
“What? Why?”
Anakin ignored her and turned to Ahsoka. “Palpatine is the Sith Lord we’ve been looking for in the Senate, he wants to make our son his next apprentice, and he started the war to kill the Jedi and consolidate enough power to make a new Sith empire.”
Notes:
Hope you enjoyed. Thanks in advanced for all the kudos, comments, subscriptions, and bookmarks.
Chapter Text
Dad gave him very explicit instructions to stay away from Palpatine. But it wasn’t like he could exactly ignore Master Windu when he was summoned to the Temple, learned Obi-wan had engaged with General Grievous, and told him to report it to the Chancellor.
It was just a quick report. He’d tell the Chancellor that Obi-wan was fighting Grievous, get his reaction, and leave. Palpatine might be full of shit according to his dad, but his dad also tended not to like very many people and thought just about everyone was full of shit.
Anakin wished he had listened. He wished he had waited for Padmé and taken his dad’s advice and fled the planet.
“I know what’s been troubling you,” Palpatine assured.
What the hell was he doing? Why was Anakin standing here listening to him? Why hadn’t he stabbed the man through with his lightsaber yet?
“Listen to me. Don't continue to be a pawn of the Jedi Council. Ever since I've known you, you've been searching for a life greater than that of an ordinary Jedi. A life of significance. Of conscience.”
Maybe Anakin would have fallen for that if not for talking to his Dad earlier. If not for the man reminding him of the reason he went to become a Jedi. Not for prestige. Not a life of significance. Not even for power. But just to be able to help people. As a necessary consequence, he grew in prestige. Grew in significance. Grew in power. But he didn’t care about any of that. He didn’t need any of that. He just… He just had to be himself. He was enough. If Padmé was going to die, he could figure out a way to prevent it without anyone else’s help. And certainly without Palpatine’s.
“My dad was right about you,” Anakin growled. “You are full of shit.”
“The man who lied to you your entire life? The man who pretended to be your father all the while knowing that he wasn’t?”
“Maybe he did lie. Maybe he did keep secrets. Maybe he’s not my biological dad. But he is where it counts, and if you really cared, you would have told me that instead of just confusing me further. You wouldn’t have tried to drive me away from him. But that was your plan the entire time. Make me think everyone else was lying and only wanted to use me. But it was you. You’ve been the real liar all along.”
Nothing apparent changed on Palpatine’s face, but suddenly, it was like a mask had fallen and no longer did Anakin see the kind man who had looked out for him since he got to Coruscant. He saw… Anakin wasn’t sure he could describe it, but it was definitely hostile. Definitely ready to attack.
“Anakin, my boy. I was hoping you wouldn’t make this difficult.”
“Go to hell,” Anakin said and jabbed his lightsaber forward to cut the man’s head off only for Palpatine to pull out a lightsaber and block him.
If Anakin had any doubts about the man’s true nature, they were erased then.
He cursed his rashness. He shouldn’t have come here. He should have left to report Palpatine to the Jedi Council. Anything except challenge the man to a duel in his office when he hadn’t slept or eaten in days from the anxiety induced by his nightmares. When he’d already been through the emotional rigmarole of finally, actually, talking to his dad and all the revelations that came with it.
In short, Anakin was exhausted. Nowhere near peak fighting condition. Certainly nowhere strong enough to beat the damned Sith master alone. Even with adrenaline coursing through his veins.
It wasn’t long before Palpatine had him on the ropes, until he got sloppy and left himself open for attack.
“Let this be your first lesson in obeying your master, my apprentice.”
“I’ll never be your apprentice. You will never be my master. I will never be your slave.”
“You will. I have foreseen it.”
“Fuck your vision.”
Palpatine made his move, and Anakin braced himself for a painful blow from the man’s lightsaber.
Except it never came. A brilliant presence in the Force filled the office, bright and consuming in a way that Anakin had never felt before, and he wondered if this is what other Force users sensed when they were around him.
Snap. Hiss.
The clash of Palpatine’s lightsaber against a saber that wasn’t Anakin’s.
“Stay. The hell. Away. From my son.”
Holy Force! Holy…
It was one thing for Dad to tell him he could use the Force and used to be a Jedi. It was an entirely different thing to see his dad locking his blue fucking lightsaber with Palpatine’s red one. He wasn’t sure which revelation was more stunning. Palpatine being a Sith or Dad being a Jedi.
“Dad…”
“I told you. To stay away from Palpatine. This is the exact opposite of that,” Dad said through gritted teeth, without looking away from Palpatine.
Before Anakin could answer that, his dad had to move out the way of Palpatine’s attack, and the two—the secret Sith and the secret Jedi—faced each other at opposite ends of the room with lightsabers at the ready.
“You are under arrest, Chancellor Palpatine,” Dad said.
“Are you threatening me?” Palpatine asked.
“We’ll let the Senate decide that.”
“I am the Senate.”
“Not if I haven’t anything to say about it. And you’ll find I have a shit ton to say about it.”
“It’s treason, then.”
“Yeah. Figured you’d say that.”
That’s when Anakin noticed his father hadn’t come alone. Into the room walked a bunch of the 501st, about a dozen other senators, and his mother.
“Thought you could use some witnesses, Skyguy,” his mother said and—wait. That was Snips’s name for him. Why…?
“Took you long enough,” Dad said.
“Then I supposed I’ll have to ensure none of you live to tell the tale,” Palpatine snarled, and then the Red Guard entered the room behind the entourage his mother had brought and all hell broke loose. Dad and Palpatine lunged for each other, the 501st began to shoot at the Red guard to defend the Senators, and in the chaos, his mom managed to cross the room over to him.
“You okay, Ani?” she asked.
“Mom, what have you and Dad been—” He was distracted by his dad narrowly missing losing his other arm.
“He looks like he could use some help,” Mom commented, nodding her head in Dad’s direction.
Anakin moved forward to do just that only for his mom—his fucking mom!—to suddenly draw two lightsabers.
“You’re a Jedi!”
“No. I haven’t been a Jedi since long before you were born.”
That, Anakin decided, was the most stunning revelation of the day.
“Mom!”
But she was gone, jumping into the fray to help his Dad.
Anakin refrained from jumping in long enough to comm Master Windu.
“Skywalker. Where—”
Anakin turned his comm in the direction of the chaotic fight. He took hearing the man swear violently as indication that he was apprised of the situation before tossing away his comm and joining the fight.
“You two,” Anakin growled as he closed in on Palpatine from the side his parents’ weren’t on, “have sooo much fucking explaining to do when this is all over.”
“We’ll talk later. Right now. Kill the Chancellor Sith Lord.”
“Arrest,” one of the senators Mom had brought with them said.
“We’re trying,” Dad snapped in that tone he always used when he thought one of his colleagues was being an idiot. “But, clearly, he’s resisting.”
Palpatine ended up dead.
The days following were a blur for Anakin.
Combing through Palpatine’s office for evidence with data miners, decrypters, interns, assistants, and lawyers. Compiling everything they found. Immediately arresting and detaining Palpatine’s entire cabinet for conspiracy to commit treason, then getting in front of the Senate for an emergency session and presenting hours and hours of evidence over the course of days and calling up dozens of witnesses, including Palaptine’s cabinet and Maul, captured right from Mandalore courtesy of his son’s apprentice. All to prove that Palpatine had been controlling the war from both sides in an effort to create an empire. Because they couldn’t just get in front of the Senate and say Palpatine was a Sith when the Senate didn’t even know the significance of what a Sith was.
After all that was a vote call for a ceasefire with the death of Count Dooku, General Grievous, and Palpatine to open up negotiations to end the war. Still, despite all that, some wanted to protest.
But Anakin had never been known for being afraid to hit below the belt.
During the days they took for recess before putting everything to a vote, he silenced those protests by suggesting how awful it would be if they didn’t get the votes they needed and some very personal information leaked onto the holonet. Affairs. Bribes. Assaults. Embezzlement. Not that Anakin didn’t plan on making it his business to root such corruption out the Senate eventually with the threat of the war gone, but for now it served his purpose to get what they needed. When they convened again, the vote to call for a ceasefire and open negotiations went through.
All the while, he was nursing a deep lightsaber burn on his leg. He’d been lucky Palpatine—Sidious, hadn’t cut it off. He was lucky Ani hadn’t hesitated to take the opening and stabbed Palpatine right through his chest before he could lose it.
All that to say was he should have been resting. But he allowed himself to work on pure adrenaline and caf to ensure that his colleagues didn’t try to twist this disaster into anything other than what it was.
With that done, Anakin decided to bow out to take a break and left a representative in his place to deal with the new task of picking a chancellor.
Frankly, he didn’t care who the hell they picked. He could work around them just like he’d been doing with Palpatine the last few years.
“Shouldn’t you be at the Senate voting in a new chancellor?” Ani said appearing in the entryway to the kitchen where Anakin was making his morning tzai.
“I wasn’t aware you kept up with such matters.”
Ani shrugged. “I don’t. But Padmé mentioned it. Said you’re in the nomination pool.”
Anakin huffed. “Those idiots would seriously have to be fucking around to vote me in as fucking chancellor. Bail Organa is a little too privileged and cares too much about the status quo that helped get us into this mess for my liking, but he’s a good man. He means well. He’ll make a decent chancellor and be a definitive step up from a Sith leading the Republic.”
Ani didn’t reply, and Anakin said nothing as he prepared tzai and then passed Ani a mug when he was done. He took it and then followed him to stand in front of the large window to look out into the morning traffic with the Temple standing tall in the background.
“So,” Ani said. “You’re… You’re me.”
“No.”
“But a version of me? Or I’m a version of you.”
“What did your mother say?”
“What I just said, I thought.”
Anakin used the Force to focus on a locked drawer in his bedroom and click it open. His lightsaber levitated into the room and into his waiting hand.
Anakin then held out his lightsaber for his son to see. Ani proceeded to unclip his lightsaber from his belt and held his out the same way so that the sabers were side by side. Just like Anakin had known they would be, the two weapons were very similar, but different in the details. Different in the details of the song the respective crystals sang. Different to reflect the differences of the two people who had built them.
When he was sure his son got the point, Anakin stated, “Our identical DNA makes us no more the exact same person as the shared DNA of the clones make any of them the same person. As master Yoda would say, luminous beings, we all are. Each distinct beings in the Force.”
“You really are a time traveling Jedi from another universe,” Ani said breathlessly. “That’s… That’s going to take a lot to get used to. That’s not weird to you? That you technically raised yourself? Sort of? Even though we’re not the same people.”
“Stopped being weird after your mother handed you to me, and I held you in my arms the first time. It just was, at that point.”
“Mother…”
“Ahsoka,” Anakin clarified with a roll of his eyes. “She was gone barely an hour and came back with you.”
“Speaking of that, you married your padawan?”
“She had stopped being my padawan long before we came here. Did she tell you about…?”
“How she ended up leaving the Jedi? Yeah. She told me everything. Every question I asked her. Just like you both promised.”
“Where is she, by the way?”
“Offering her services to the Council for war cleanup. Particularly to go arrest the Separatist Council from where they’re holed up on Mustafar after they elect a new chancellor and are given the go ahead.”
“She’s going to enjoy that. While playing the role as my arm candy wife and throwing money at relief work was important to us uncovering who was behind this, your mother’s skillset is much broader than that of just a spy and information gatherer. She’ll like the chance to get out in the field again.”
“So I saw. What about you? Going to retire from the Senate? Wanna get back in the field again? Be a Jedi. There’s going to be a lot of war clean up and not enough Jedi to go around. I’m sure the Council would be happy, if reluctant, to have you.”
“No thanks. I haven’t been a Jedi in twenty-three years, and I find the freedom from their rules and mandates liberating. I don’t think I can fit myself into that box again. And fighting them to change it would honestly be worse than wrangling those Senators into submission. I’ll leave that to you.” Then, “By the way, if you and Padmé want to avoid scandal, now is the time to reveal everything to the public. Compared to everything else, no one is going to care about the possible ethics violations and political conflicts of your marriage. The public will see it as a fairytale and confirmation of what they thought anyway. People love a good tale of romance.”
“Yeah. Padmé said that. She’s working with her team to prepare a statement about that.”
Silence fell between them again, but Anakin sensed there was more Ani had to say and so waited.
In the meantime, he opened himself up in the Force in a way he hadn’t had the privilege to in effort to hide his identity. Allowed himself to feel thrum of Coruscant. Feel the light of the Force, still affected by the shroud of the dark side but lighter than it had been in a long time. Then he grabbed onto the natural connection he had with Ani and for the first time, tugged.
Next to him, Ani jumped in surprise and suddenly locked up his shields. Anakin smirked and gave Ani time. Upon realizing what was happening, Ani relaxed his body and his shields, allowing Anakin to envelope him in his presence and feel him for the first time.
“Do you miss it?” Ani suddenly blurted out. “Your world that is. Your Padmé, and your Obi-wan and everything? Do you wish you could go back?”
“I used to wish I could go back, and sometimes I still miss it. Sometimes I wish I could just… tell everyone that I’m okay and make sure they’re okay. But other than that, I wouldn’t exchange the last twenty-three years raising you, my son. I’d choose you every time.”
Suddenly, Anakin’s arms were full of his son as he said, “I love you, Dad. Sorry. For everything I said before. I didn’t mean any of it.”
“There’s nothing to forgive,” Anakin said returning the hug. “I love you, too.”
Ani’s comm went off seconds later. It ended up being one of Padmé’s handmaidens notifying him that she’d gone into labor.
The Force reassured Anakin again and again that his son’s visions wouldn’t come true. That whatever danger Padmé would have been in had long since passed. But it didn’t stop him from pacing outside the delivery room for hours in worry, even when Ahsoka snapped at him to stop because he was making her nervous. If something happened to Padmé, Ani would be devastated.
He didn’t stop until his son darted out the room with a bright smile and exclaimed, “It’s twins,” and then proceeded to drag Anakin and Ahsoka into the room to meet Luke and Leia Naberrie Skywalker.
Anakin was rocking Leia in his arms and trying to hush her whimpers just like he did her father two decades ago when his comm vibrated. He almost ignored it but then saw that it was Bail Organa, likely Chancellor-elect Bail Organa by now, and decided to answer it.
“Congratulations are in order,” the man said with a smirk.
“Thank you. They’re perfect,” Anakin replied absently, eyes still on his granddaughter.
“Oh… Padmé had a safe delivery I’m assuming. Well, congratulations on that too. But that’s not what I was referring to before my old friend.”
Before Anakin could ask what the Alderaan Senator was talking about, his son exclaimed, “Dad!”
Anakin looked at Ani and then followed his stunned gaze to the holo-screen that was flickering silently in the corner of the room.
There was a candid photo of him on the screen, storming down the halls of the Senate for one reason or another with a scowl on his face, his brow furrowed and glancing off to the side to no doubt snap a cutting remark at someone who had irritated him with their stupidity.
On the bright red banner across the bottom of the screen, in big, bold white letters read:
BREAKING: CHANCELLOR-ELECT ANAKIN SKYWALKER.
“You’re. Fucking. Kidding. Me! The Senate really fucked around and voted me fucking chancellor!”
Leia jolted in his arms and proceeded to cry.
Anakin Skywalker, still had the best parents in the galaxy as far as he was concerned. He was twenty-six with two children of his own and a lot more to learn about life but that was something he was sure was never going to change.
“Sir,” Dad’s clone guards said as he walks into the Chancellor’s office.
Anakin could do little more than nod as he held tightly to his Luke’s and Leia’s hands to prevent them from them from running up to Dad in case he was in the middle of something.
He was.
“I’m not talking about invading planets. But how in the hell in a thousand years did it occur to no one that we needed a centralized agency to enforce the laws on the books? What did you all expect? We would outlaw behavior, ask planetary officials and corporations to comply nicely, and expect them to do it on their own? This kind of bantha brained behavior result in the type of dissatisfaction that Palpatine took advantage of to almost create an empire.”
There was a pause that made Anakin know his dad was on a holocall and not in a physical meeting.
“I’m not defending Palpatine. I’m saying that him and everyone else involved in that conspiracy is a symptom of a bigger problem that you’re too distracted by all the sand up your ass to realize existed to begin with.”
Anakin winced. The longer his dad was in office, the more he wondered what anyone in the Senate was thinking by voting him into the highest office in the Republic. Did they think it was going to calm him? If anything, it enabled him. But if Padmé was to be believed, he wasn’t doing a bad job and might be the best chancellor the Republic had had in centuries because, in her exact words, “Your father is always going to find a way to get shit done.”
When his Dad was finally in his line of vision, his call had ended, either by him getting tired of whoever it was and hanging up on them or them hanging up on him in fury at his insult. Either way, his Dad looked irritated as he always tended to after dealing with an irritating colleague.
“I hate this job. Fuck a second term in two years. I’m going to quit.”
“You know you love every second,” Anakin said, getting his dad’s attention at the same time the twins gasped and said, “Grandpa! You said a bad word!”
His father’s irritation was quickly forgotten, and he grinned at Luke and Leia who ran up to him after Anakin let their hands go. His Dad stood from his seat with the two in his arms.
“This job will make you say a lot of bad words. When you have an awful job when you’re grown, you’ll be allowed to say them too,” his Dad assured.
The twins giggled.
“Where’s your--?” Dad began only to stop.
His eyes went to the doorway as his mother walked into the office, fresh off a mission if her dark outfit and the lightsabers swinging on her hips was anything to go by.
Mom had sworn up and down she wasn’t returning to the Jedi. That her time as a Jedi was long since passed, even after she got involved helping them on a mission here and a mission there until it seemed like every week she was reporting to the Council. Finally, a year ago, they’d offered to induct her into their ranks with the title of Master.
She’d hesitated on the offer. Then Dad very bluntly told her, “You were always meant to be a Jedi. More than I ever was. If those old, stuck up hoots are willing to let you in despite the fact that you break nearly all their traditions on family and attachments, take it.”
Now he and Dad had a bet on when they were going to offer her a seat on the Council.
“You were a bad influence on our son enough as it is. Don’t be one on the grandchildren,” Mom said, taking Luke from Dad.
“The only thing I ever did that you didn’t approve of was teach him podracing and look how that turned out.”
Luke lifted his head off his grandmother’s shoulder and asked, “What’s podracing?”
“No!” Mom said firmly even as Anakin exchanged a look with his dad and grinned. She added again, “No. And Padmé is going to agree with me.”
(Padmé does agree with Ahsoka. But that doesn’t stop Anakin and his dad from teaching the twins anyway on a trip to Tatooine when they’re seven. For a woman without the Force and barely taller than a meter and a half, Padmé Amidala’s wrath afterward is enough to make Anakin and his dad think twice about continuing their lessons…
Only think twice, though because they finish their lessons in secret anyway.)
Notes:
So, that was fun. Got it all out in a week and a half when I thought it would take a month.
While this is over, I do have one more thing to post in the next week or so and it's for all the Anisoka fans because this story doesn't really focus on that aspect of the time traveling duo. And it's going to be smutty because we need more Anisoka smut. But I get that's not for everyone and it really didn't have a place in this story which is really a story about what if Anakin Skywalker had to look out for himself and simultaneously if he had people to look out for him and understand him better. So, look out for that story in the next week or two.
Hope you enjoyed. Thanks for all the kudos, comments, subscriptions and bookmarks. Until next time, LadyDae out.
Pages Navigation
Gandalf_Stormcrow on Chapter 1 Sat 15 Oct 2022 05:52AM UTC
Comment Actions
annabella_lector on Chapter 1 Sat 15 Oct 2022 06:09AM UTC
Comment Actions
unlostwandering on Chapter 1 Sat 15 Oct 2022 07:46AM UTC
Comment Actions
iskiforfun on Chapter 1 Sat 15 Oct 2022 12:16PM UTC
Comment Actions
mrsstohelit on Chapter 1 Sat 15 Oct 2022 12:25PM UTC
Comment Actions
Asami_T on Chapter 1 Sat 15 Oct 2022 04:56PM UTC
Comment Actions
Jedi_Master_Misty_SmanEsay on Chapter 1 Sat 15 Oct 2022 10:13PM UTC
Comment Actions
Kristeen on Chapter 1 Thu 29 Feb 2024 06:30PM UTC
Comment Actions
LadyAngelight on Chapter 1 Mon 02 Oct 2023 05:47AM UTC
Comment Actions
jumpbus360 on Chapter 1 Tue 17 Jun 2025 05:54AM UTC
Comment Actions
Jedi_Master_Misty_SmanEsay on Chapter 2 Mon 17 Oct 2022 03:35AM UTC
Comment Actions
LadyDae on Chapter 2 Mon 17 Oct 2022 02:47PM UTC
Comment Actions
RedBlood_Moon on Chapter 2 Mon 17 Oct 2022 05:18AM UTC
Comment Actions
LadyDae on Chapter 2 Mon 17 Oct 2022 02:47PM UTC
Comment Actions
Gandalf_Stormcrow on Chapter 2 Mon 17 Oct 2022 10:44AM UTC
Comment Actions
LadyDae on Chapter 2 Mon 17 Oct 2022 02:48PM UTC
Comment Actions
Psych1c (Guest) on Chapter 2 Mon 17 Oct 2022 11:21AM UTC
Comment Actions
LadyDae on Chapter 2 Mon 17 Oct 2022 02:47PM UTC
Comment Actions
ladypomegranates on Chapter 2 Tue 18 Oct 2022 12:59AM UTC
Comment Actions
LadyDae on Chapter 2 Tue 18 Oct 2022 06:18PM UTC
Comment Actions
Lews_Therin_Talamon on Chapter 2 Wed 02 Nov 2022 06:48AM UTC
Comment Actions
Gandalf_Stormcrow on Chapter 3 Tue 18 Oct 2022 08:05PM UTC
Comment Actions
Greywinddoggy on Chapter 3 Tue 18 Oct 2022 08:18PM UTC
Comment Actions
lorireadsstuff on Chapter 3 Wed 19 Oct 2022 12:02AM UTC
Comment Actions
LadyDae on Chapter 3 Wed 19 Oct 2022 03:10AM UTC
Comment Actions
annabella_lector on Chapter 3 Wed 19 Oct 2022 01:49AM UTC
Comment Actions
LadyDae on Chapter 3 Wed 19 Oct 2022 03:10AM UTC
Comment Actions
Jedi_Master_Misty_SmanEsay on Chapter 3 Wed 19 Oct 2022 03:56AM UTC
Comment Actions
LadyDae on Chapter 3 Wed 19 Oct 2022 11:01AM UTC
Comment Actions
Pages Navigation