Obi-Wan was having turbulent dreams, as he often did these days. There were no prophecies, portents or visions. These were not messages from the force. Just turbulent dreams. Random jumbles of old memories, so many of the painful, triggering in his unconscious mind. Occasionally, he'd spend some moments in meditation wondering if he'd reached a critical mass of life experiences. He'd seen and felt and endured so much that sometimes it seemed as though his brain could barely handle it all.
He'd survived a genocide that exterminated upwards of ninety-nine percent of his people. He'd seen his mentor killed in a duel on Naboo. Master Yoda, killed by the Emperor. Senator Amidala, dead. Anakin Skywalker, fallen. Their children, hidden in two separate corners of the galaxy. And on top of that, he'd seen a a lifetime's worth of horror in four years of the Clone Wars.
Obi-Wan opened his eyes. Peace was elusive, even in sleep.
He breathed deep and tried to still his thoughts, then turned and nuzzled closer to Siri. Good thing she slept like a rock. Obi-Wan would often toss and turn in his sleep; so many of his dreams were frantic recollections of old battles, long settled. Siri grunted as he kissed her on the cheek. Then, still half-asleep, she turned and tangled her legs around his, mumbling something under her breath.
Obi-Wan smiled at her. He wondered if it was his discipline as a Jedi or his love for her that kept him anchored. Perhaps it was a little bit of both.
He frowned suddenly. He felt something...wet. A fluid that was running down his upper leg, dripping diagonally towards his knee. It was thick. Viscous. He dabbed his fingers in it and stared at it. He didn't recognize it until brought it closer to his face and the dark pigments betrayed their true color beneath the dim light of the distant stars.
"Siri." His voice was calm at first, but quickly rose to a panic. "Siri!"
She awoke groggily, eyes bloodshot and exhausted.
"What?" She seemed to be in a daze.
"Siri, you're bleeding."
Siri blinked at the blood on his finger. Obi-Wan felt his fears compounding with hers.
"Oh god," she said as she ripped the covers off.
The stain emanated outward from where she lay.
.
The med droid gave them the final confirmation in the morning. Ten and a half weeks into her pregnancy, Siri Tachi had miscarried. She took the bad news as she would have taken any other. She turned away and refused to let that mask of impartiality set so forlornly on her face crack.
It wasn't the loss of a child, the spontaneous termination of a life that she and Obi-Wan had already begun preparing for... It was just a loss. No worse than any of the other losses she'd endured in her lifetime as a Jedi. Hell, as a General in the GAR, she'd seen thousands of her men killed in the field. How was this any worse? Because it was personal? Because it was her child? Because it wasn't grown in some lab on Kamino, but in her womb?
Obi-Wan tried to comfort her but she pushed him away, even though she knew that his sorrows were hers. Two days passed and she still couldn't look at him. There was too much pain. Too much hurt. He wanted the baby as much as she did, and she couldn't overcome the feeling that she'd failed him, in one of the basest, most visceral ways possible.
Ahsoka tried to talk to her. Siri rebuffed her too. How could she possibly understand? At seventeen, she was still just a girl, despite the wealth of experience that surviving the Clone Wars and the fall of the Republic had given her. Besides, there were some pains she simply couldn't share with her apprentice.
Five days later, she was in the room she shared with Obi-Wan, standing naked in front of the full body length mirror. Her body was a map of old wounds and scars. Each one, a story, a relic, a souvenir of a place she'd visited, a place where she'd almost died.
Obi-Wan walked in and raised a brow as he looked her up and down. Despite everything, she couldn't help but smile. That smile faded as he closed the door. She looked down and he walked up to her, placed hands on her shoulders, stroked her cheek.
"Siri," he said, bending to try and catch her gaze. "Let me in. Please."
She looked past him, at the reflection of herself and sighed. "When did we get so old, Obi-Wan?"
He blinked and looked away. He didn't know, either. Was it after Quadant Seven? After they admitted their love to each other for the first time but decided to bury it for fear of being expelled? Was it during Azure, when old feelings started to stirring again, and she stole a kiss from him when Anakin wasn't looking? Or was it only now, now that they were the last of the Jedi and free to make their own rules...free to even have a family if they wanted.
"We're not that old." He tried to smile.
And it was true. Plenty of couples older than them were still bearing children. But they had...unique circumstances. They'd had unique experiences, been exposed to certain hazards. Endured certain hardships.
When Obi-Wan moved from the mirror, she glanced at the constellation of scars that dotted the left side of her lower abdomen, just below the belly button. She ran her hands over them, feeling the standing texture of the areas where sutures had been used to seal the once gaping wounds.
"I remember when you got those," Obi-Wan said.
She nodded, more to herself than to him. It was the siege at Soliz City on Ando Prime. Anakin's first deployment as a fully trained Jedi Knight. He'd led the first strike and she was commanding his reinforcements. During the push to get across the city and reinforce him, she'd called in a danger-close fire mission that came a little too close to her position. She'd used the Force to shield her face and chest but didn't do enough to protect her lower body.
The medic said she would recover. And she did. In time, all those gaping wounds became nothing more than scars and a story. But throughout the recovery process, she'd never asked about any long term damage that shrapnel might have caused. There could have been reproductive damage. Of course, that didn't matter then. But now?
"I should have reacted faster," she said.
Obi-Wan frowned. "You survived-"
"But our kid didn't!" She kept a hand on the old wounds, a gesture simple enough to convey the rest: and what if it's because of this?What if it's because of me?
He held her, looked down into her eyes. His were so wide open and so filled with a emotion that she started to appreciate just how much this had hurt him, too. "This isn't your fault," he whispered. "We did everything right-these things just happen."
"They just happen, or are they more likely to happen to us?"
"What do you mean?"
She gritted her teeth. "The war. All those chemicals we were exposed to. All the radiation. Biological warfare from the Separatists..."
"Siri-"
"I haven't even had an exam since before the war. How do I even know if I can carry a child to term? So many things happened to us. So-"
And that's when the breakdown occurred. She started crying in his arms. Slowly at first, in staggered starts and stops, then she wailed, quietly, but continuously as he encircled her with his arms. She laid her head in his chest, against those brown robes that had come to be so synonymous with him. Soon she felt a dampness on the top of her head, drops that trickled down her strands of hair and could only be his tears.
. . . . .
"Ben and Zora Organa?"
Obi-Wan raised a hand and walked up to the service window with Siri at his side. He'd shaved his beard, cut his hair, dyed it brown and put in brown contact lenses for the purpose of maintaining this disguise. Siri had dyed her hair auburn. They were both dressed in rich clothing appropriate for their station-clothing which they'd had to borrow from Bail and Breha for this particular trip to Coronet.
"Come on in, Doctor Lorrent will see you now."
The doors to the interior of the clinic slid open. Teysa Lorrent, a woman who appeared to be in her late forties, was on the other side of the door, waiting for them. She smiled warmly at the royal couple.
"Ah, Duke Organa." She bowed and shook Obi-Wan's hand. "I'm sure you must get enough of this back on your homeworld, but I'm a great admirer of your cousin."
Obi-Wan smiled. "Good to know that he has his fans, even out here."
The doctor chuckled. "Oh, don't get me wrong-I'm Corellian, through and through-but it's nice to see someone other than Garm willing to stand up to that mutt of an Emperor in the Senate. Bail Organa is a great man."
Obi-Wan and Siri exchanged a glance. A political partisan. Should they have been surprised? After all, they'd been referred to this woman by Ahsoka, who had in turn learned of her through Garm Bel Iblis, the Corellian Resistance Leader himself.
"Doctor, meet my wife, Duchess Zora Organa," Obi-Wan said.
Lorrent shook Siri's hand warmly. "An honor, Your Grace."
"Doctor, before we begin," Siri said, "I want to ensure we have your highest confidence."
"Yes," Obi-Wan added, "we're hoping that this consultation would be off the records. As you know, my cousin and his wife recently adopted. If word got out that someone else in the family was having fertility problems...let's just say that it wouldn't play very well for the press back home."
Lorrent looked at them both for a beat then nodded. "Of course, your names won't even be put on the files. Now, exactly what sort of treatments were the two of you looking for?"
. . .
"Okay," Lorrent began, opening the dossier of printed flimsies, "both of you have healthy, viable gametes. Conception should not be a problem. However-and I do believe that this is where the two of you might have had difficulties in the past...Duchess Organa, our scans show that damage has been done to your uterus. Signs of a rupture in the past, perhaps the result of an accident?"
"Yes, " Siri said. "I've not always been a safe speeder driver."
Lorrent nodded. "The scar tissue that covers much of your uterus will make it extremely difficult to carry a child to term naturally."
The sullen look that took over Siri's face made Lorrent shift uncomfortably. Obi-Wan held Siri's hand, then looked at the doctor. "We had a miscarriage recently, doctor."
Lorrent paled. "Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that."
"Does this mean that-" Siri suddenly stopped. She looked so frail and weak and ashamed and so unlike Siri Tachi in that moment. Obi-Wan squeezed her hand. "Does that mean that we can't have children?"
"The injuries you suffered in the past are hardly an insurmountable problem. There are many options available, Your Grace. My office can produce healthy embryos from your gametes and either place them in a surrogate or a gestation chamber. You also have the option to carry the baby to term yourself if you are so inclined-"
"I am," Siri said without blinking. "But...how would that work? I thought you said that I couldn't."
Lorrent folded her hands on her desk. "It would be difficult to carry a child to term naturally, Your Grace. When...done naturally, we can't control where the embryo implants itself. Much-but not all-of your uterus is lined with scar tissue. If an embryo implants itself on scar tissue, its chances of surviving beyond twelve weeks decreases tremendously. However, with advanced embryo transfer techniques-which my practice has developed-we can ensure that an embryo is implanted on healthy tissue."
"And the pregnancy would proceed as normal?"
The doctor nodded. "Yes. The chances of complication would be minimal."
Obi-Wan watched Siri through the entire exchange. When she looked back at him, he felt something unsettled within her. "Doctor," he said, "can you give us a moment to discuss this?"
"Of course, Your Grace," she said with a nod, rising from her desk. "I'll return in five minutes. Would either of you like a caf?"
They both declined. Once she was gone, Obi-Wan leaned over to Siri.
"You don't have to do this," he said.
"But I want to," she said.
"Are you sure?" He squeezed her hand again and she looked at him. "Because I get the feeling that you want to do this just to prove that you can. We have other options-she said so."
Siri looked up at wall and all the holo displays of women of different species going through different phases of their pregnancies. "How did Anakin feel after he lost his arm on Geonosis?"
It seemed like a rhetorical question, but she pressed for an answer when he fell silent. "He felt weak, vulnerable..." Obi-Wan shook his head. As horrible as that experience was for Anakin, it was the good old days from his perspective now. He hated thinking about it. "It certainly brought his pride down a notch, because he realized that, just like everyone else, he was less capable with just one hand."
"That's how I feel-how I've felt since we lost the baby." She looked at him again, and he knew that she was staring straight through his fears, his doubts and his anxiety. "I know the risks. I'm not afraid of taking them again. I lost a child, Obi-Wan. I'm not becoming one. You don't have to protect me."
He smiled. That was the Siri he knew. "You can't blame me for wanting to, though, can you?"
"I love you." She kissed him.
Doctor Lorrent came back in a few moments later with a cup of caf, which she sipped gently while going through the paperwork and the particulars with them.
They were to return for an embryo transfer in four days.
. . . . .
Siri was anxious and excited. The past few days had been a waiting game that completely frayed her nerves. Ahsoka came over to visit them a few times and they had some meditation sessions but even when deep in the Force she couldn't fully vent her stress.
She was going to be a mother. And unlike the last false start, they had all the backing of modern science to ensure that things went right. The fertilization would be successful and in nine months they would have a child.
They were admitted to one of the treatment rooms without much waiting. Lorrent was there peering into a microscope with several test tubes on a rack next to it. This room, like Lorrent's office, was decorated with holos of women of various species in various stages of preganacy. Lorrent gestured to a bed whose stirrups made its purpose explicitly clear.
"Whenever you're ready, Your Grace," Lorrent said with a slight bow.
"May I take a look first?" Siri asked, pointing to the microscope.
Lorrent frowned, then gave a dubious smile. "Of...course."
Siri stepped to the microscope. A fertilized eight-cell human embryo. Nothing she hadn't seen before in biology class when she was a younging. She backed away from the microscope and took a deep breath. This was her. This was Obi-Wan. A combination of the two of them, a product of their love and, in time, their contribution to the re-building of the Jedi Order. She reached out for Obi-Wan's hand and barely found it. She squeezed hard, and the jumble of emotions gushing out of her got his attention.
"O-" She caught herself almost almost dropping character. "Ben, look."
He was distant. The look she saw in his eyes indicated that he had been elsewhere. Somewhere in the Force. Of course. He was on guard. He had to be. Both of them couldn't afford to be lost in some reverie at the same time-not while in an unsecured place like Coronet, at least. But she pulled him closer anyway, practically dragged him to the microscope.
"She's beautiful, Ben," Siri said.
Lorrent raised a brow. "How do you know it's going to be a girl?"
Siri smiled at her. "Just a feeling."
That's when Obi-Wan grabbed her and whispered to her ear, "there's a disturbance in the Force. Something isn't right."
Siri frowned. She hadn't sensed it. But she'd been lost to her own reverie the entire day.
"Does anyone else know about this?" Obi-Wan asked Lorrent.
"No, Your Grace," Lorrent said, shaking her head. "You made it explicitly clear-I have not recorded your name or likeness anywhere."
Obi-Wan gave her his patient sigh. "But does anyone know about the baby?"
Lorrent frowned. "I sent a sample of the zygote's DNA to ImpCom HealthSec. And no, I didn't affix either of your names to the zygote-I sent it in as a John Antilles."
Siri felt a weight beginning to fall on her shoulders. "Why, exactly would you do that?"
Lorrent blinked at her clients' gawking. "Well, it's standard procedure for any In Vitro fertilization. The new laws mandate it. Don't worry though. I kept your names off the record. The Imperials just require a DNA sample to screen for any genetic diseases..."
And for midi-chlorians! Siri's face went pale. Her senses were primed and fully deployed now. And she felt that disturbance-it was more than a disturbance, it was movement.
"Stormtroopers?" She said to Obi-Wan.
He nodded glumly. "We have to go."
"What?" Lorrent said, astonished. "The process will only take a few more minutes!"
Obi-Wan shook his head. "Siri, we have to go."
She looked at him, then looked longingly at the microscope. "But...our baby!"
He looked at the microscope, then looked at the door. "They're going to be here any minute."
She bit her lip and tried so hard to not let the hurt blur her vision any more than it already was. She looked for the nearest exit besides the door they'd just walked in from. And there it was-a window between a poster of a Twi'lek in her third trimester and a Rodian in her first. She squeezed Obi-Wan's hand looked to him for some last-minute reassurances. What she saw in his face was the mirror image of her grief and her agony.
They were going to lose a child again.
The first troops came storming into the room just as they'd jumped clear of the window.
Mara Jade had just committed her first murder.
No, it was not a murder. To call it murder would be to assign virtue to the victim. And he was scum, plain and simple. The Emperor had shown her himself the true nature of "Justice" Tiro Kassal. He was a corrupt man, who used his office as a judge to grant favors to the highest bidder. He enjoyed child pornography and took advantage of young girls that passed through as wards of his court.
Killing him was not murder. It was justice.
That didn't change the fact that it was difficult. She'd ambushed him but he had a blaster. She used her lightsaber to deflect his blaster bolts, the Force to knock him down and eventually to overpower him. But when it came time for the final act-for the searing out of his insides...that part, she had to do alone.
And she did it. Even though her hand wasn't entirely steady, even though she felt slightly nauseous at the thought of killing for the first time, even though she began to pity him as he begged for his life. She did it, for the sake of the vow she'd sworn to the Emperor. Moreover, for the sake of the reward he'd promised her-anything that she asked for, within reason, would be hers.
Of all the things in the galaxy, there was one thing she wanted most of all.
She knelt before the Emperor, face so low it almost touched the ground.
"Arise My Hand," the Emperor said. "Reports are coming back to me. Tiro Kassal is dead. Do I have you to thank for this relief?"
"Yes, my master."
"Good, good." He nodded. "Such excellent service should be rewarded. What is your wish, My Hand?"
She looked up at her master and felt a moment of apprehension before she found her voice. "With your permission, master, I would like to know the identity of my parents. My true, biological parents."
His hands fell upon the armrests of his considerable throne. "You were birthed by a woman named Avan Gantu. She works in my quarters as one of my maids."
Mara's eyes widened. Did that mean...her father? Who was her father? She had to know.
"Avan is not your true mother. When we found you, you were just an embryo in a test tube. I sensed your potential and she agreed to carry to term as a surrogate," the Emperor said. "Your true parents, whoever they were, abandoned you before you were even born."
Mara looked down from her master and stared at the ground glumly. It would seem that she would never find the truth of her heritage.
"It saddens me that I cannot help you in this matter." The Emperor's face contorted with displeasure and he folded his hands in his lap. "Now, I do not want to hear anymore inquiries about your parents. You are dismissed, My Hand."