this is a disclaimer.
wash it away down the kitchen sink
It's long past midnight, and the corridors of the old Separatist skystation which is currently housing the leaders of the Rebel Alliance are silent as the grave. The power is off, green and red emergency lighting flooding the corridors. A few sleepless officers and pilots are lingering in the mess hall or the command centre, but most of the occupants of the station have long since gone to bed.
In corridor 45-C, just outside the main store room, someone is unscrewing the grill covering a ventilation shaft in the wall a few centimetres above the ground.
"Can you see anything?" Luke hisses.
"All clear," Leia hisses back. "We're right on schedule, Rogue Leader. Help me with the grill!"
Luke crawls up beside her, scrambling a bit in the tight space, and his training lightsabre knocks painfully into her hip. Leia glares at her brother, but they don't have time to argue or even apologise; they need to complete the mission and get out without being caught. Together, they lower the heavy grill to the floor, trying desperately to keep quiet. A harrowing moment occurs when it almost slips out of Leia's grasp, but Luke manages to balance it and hold it steady.
Luke climbs out first, sabre at the ready but not ignited. Leia follows, stepping cat-quiet over the grill.
"There it is," Luke whispers. His grey jumpsuit looks blood-red in the emergency lights, and his eyes are almost demonic. It makes Leia want to giggle.
Skywalkers do not giggle.
"Have you got the access codes?" she whispers back.
"Of course," Luke says. "Many of our people died to bring us this information, I'm not about to lose it!"
"Then let's go," Leia says, passing up another opportunity for an argument with some difficulty.
The most important thing to remember when you're on a mission is the mission. Don't get distracted.
Leia takes the lead again, and they sneak forward down the corridor, pressed against the walls. She takes her own ligtsabre in her hand as they approach the end of the corridor, but like Luke, doesn't ignite it. Never ignite your sabre unless you have to. That weapon is your life, but it can also give you away.
Luke peers around the corner to check for hostiles, gives her a thumbs-up to signal the all-clear. Leia ducks and runs across the short open space between the end of their corridor and the blast doors to the store room, and punches the access code in. They duck under the blast door together and ignite their sabres rather than turn the lights on.
When you're infiltrating a base, don't use any more power than they are. Activating systems unnecessarily will get you caught.
It doesn't take them long to find their prize. They know what the crate looks like; they were there when it was brought in. It's sitting on a table, lid propped against a leg below it. Luke climbs up next to it and holds his sabre up to look inside.
"There's not much left," he says.
"Grab it and let's go," Leia says. "Stealing even the smallest amount will disrupt their nefarious plans –"
"Nefarious?" Luke interrupts incredulously, in a far more relaxed tone of voice than he's used so far, and his sister sighs.
"I do read, nerfherder," she says. "Stop falling out of character!"
"Sorry," Luke says, lowering his voice again. "Go and check the exit, make sure they're not ambushing us!"
Leia nods and runs back to the open blast doors. The corridor is clear, yes, but she pauses; something's not quite right, even though as far as her eyes can see, there's nothing...
Your eyes can deceive you. Don't trust them.
It's not the corridor that's wrong. It's the store room.
She whips round with a cry, sabre at the ready, but he's too fast for her, appearing from the shadows to the left of the door and knocking her sabre out of her hand with the Force.
"Leia!" Luke shouts, but too late; their attacker has an arm around Leia's waist and has pulled her out of the room.
"So much for your plans, Imperial scum," he says, raising a hand.
Luke sighs. "Dad. We're the Rebels. You're the Grand Moff."
Anakin sighs too, but he doesn't relax his hold on his struggling daughter. "What, again? All right then. Within minutes, Rebel scum, we will release a toxic gas into this chamber that will kill you painfully, and your beloved sister will be sent to the spice mines of Kessel for the rest of her pitiful life!"
The best thing about making Dad be the Imperial is his villain voice. No one else on base has such a good villain voice.
Of course, no one else on base really plays with them like this.
"No!" Luke shouts, rushing forward, but Anakin closes the blast door with the Force and carries Leia off down the right hand corridor, towards the main hangar bay. He's got both arms around her now, and needs them too. She's struggling and twisting in his arms as if he really was an Imp.
"You'll never get away with this," she pants indignantly.
"On the contrary, Commander Skywalker. I have orders from the Emperor himself to see to your destruction!"
"Really Kessel?" Leia asks in her normal voice.
"Two weeks hard labour in the mines," Dad agrees.
She sighs. "But Quartermaster Hender hates us."
"He thinks you're insufferable pests, if that's what you mean, and it's not a charge I feel inclined to deny," Dad says. Leia thinks he's smiling.
"Bah," she says.
"The rules are no sneaking out of the rooms past lights out," Dad says firmly. "Imagine if your Mom had been the one to wake up and find you two had disappeared!"
Luke says Mom's always been really protective of him, and so has Dad of Leia, but after the whole thing with the school in Theed and finding out they were twins and Mom getting arrested by Tarkin and Dad having to go after her, neither of them really like to let the twins out of their sight.
It's stifling sometimes... but it makes Leia feel warm and fuzzy and protected, too.
"What were you after, anyway?" Dad asks as they emerge into the hangar bay.
"The drug you feed your stormtroopers to make them stronger and give them more endurance," Leia says. "Did you think we would sit idly by while you created a race of subservient super-humans? Hah! More strike teams will come; you will never have possession of the black gold!"
"We haven't run out of hot chocolate again, have we?" Dad groans, carrying her over to the stacks of crates at the back of the hangar and putting her down between the crates and a speeder sitting in front of them, making it seem as if she's trapped.
"And now, Commander, we will wait, and see if your beloved brother has the wits to escape my trap... and the foolishness to come and try to rescue you!"
Leia crosses her arms over her chest and glares. "I'm not a damsel in distress, Dad," she says dangerously.
"Then stop acting like a spoiled brat, Princess," Dad says and winks at her.
*********
Meanwhile, Luke had little trouble escaping the store room before the toxic gas set in, clamouring, all-encompassing darkness or not. He hid the loot in the same air vent that he and Leia had come through and then ran back to the centre of the corridor, sabre at the ready.
Where had the Moff taken her? The corridor is ghostly silent, hellish red, cold cold air brushing over his cheek. The blast door to the store room is still open. Anyone could be hiding there, just as Dad had snuck in behind them...
Leia. He has to find her, find her right now...
Use the Force, Luke. Don't think, feel! You know where she is.
Luke closes his eyes and steadies himself, breathing more slowly, calming his mind. Leia...
Yes. He knows where she is.
Luke sets off at a dead run, heart pounding wildly against his ribs.
It's a game; just a game. Roles they'd played before, him and Leia and Dad, laughing as they chased each other through the base. It's a way of finding each other after eleven years of separation, of Luke and Mom, Leia and Dad having been on their own. Distantly Luke is aware that Dad thought of these games of Imp-versus-Rebel as a sort of disguised training exercise, but they are so much fun that Luke is never bothered by this.
Until now. Now, suddenly, alone in the redgreen emergency lighting and the forsaken corridors of a skystation once built by the very people Dad had spent three years fighting against, their game feels inexplicably... real.
Somewhere, Leia is screaming; somewhere, his sister is in pain. Somewhere, Luke is watching someone he loves die, and somewhere he is falling endlessly away from unimaginable horror.
He bolts round one last corner, and the brightly lit hangar bay looms before him. Dad is there, standing tall and unconquerable in the light, grinning with anticipation. He's holding Leia's sabre in his left hand, his ungloved one, and Leia herself is slouched between a stack of crates and a speeder, looking sulky more than in pain.
Luke forces himself to a halt, crouches down against the corridor walls. He rests there until his loud pants grow quiet, his heartbeat steadier.
Out in the hangar bay, Anakin reaches out to his son through the Force. Panic and fear are sliding off the boy; what in Kessel has happened to him?
Luke.
Dad. A kind of mental breath. I'm fine.
Anakin still hesitates. What happened?
Nothing. Something. I don't know.
All right, that's it. Game over.
Luke is appalled. No! I have to rescue Leia.
Are you sure you're all right?
It's impossible to explain to Dad, but... I have to rescue Leia, Luke repeats stubbornly.
Anakin finds himself smiling suddenly. Just remember. The trick is not to mind that you're scared.
You better watch your back, Dad.
Dad turns to Leia, smirking. "It seems your brother is rather late, Commander. Is he known for his unpunctuality, or is this a recent development?"
Luke doesn't hear Leia's retort. He creeps forward on hands and knees, making sure he sticks close to the right-hand wall, where he'll hopefully be out of the Moff's direct line of sight. So... the crates. They're piled up higgledy-piggledy, maybe eight foot high? Not too much taller than Dad, and Dad is six-something, Luke remembers. The piles form a ragged sort of U-shape, with Leia's cell being at the end of the tail farthest from the bay doors.
Naturally.
But if Luke can just get across to the crates without being seen, he could climb over the top of 'his' tail of the U, to reach Leia. The Moff would be watching the hangar doors... oh, it was risky, he'll only have a few moments to get across the open space...
Luke creeps backwards a few yards and switches walls so that he's creeping along the left side of the corridor, closer to the crates. He pauses just outside the irregular rectangular spill of light into the corridor from the bay, and reaches through the Force as quietly and gently as he can.
All it takes is a tiny nudge against his sister's mind. Leia instantly knows what to do: make a run for it.
The Moff intercepts her of course ("Watch it, you've got your foot in the force field!" Dad says in his normal voice), and that's when Luke sprints out of the shadows and across the open space between the doors and the cover provided by the crates. He snatches a loose credit out of his pocket and flings it back into the corridor with the Force, making it skittle against the floor as loudly as he can. The Moff curses and pushes Leia back behind the speeder, darting to the doors.
Luke, agile as a monkey, is already on top of the pile of crates, balancing (rather more precariously than he'd thought he would be) on the opposite side, facing Leia.
"Did no one ever teach you the meaning of silence, Rogue Leader?" the Moff shouts.
"Apparently it's not a lesson you ever learned," Luke called back, hoping the Moff wouldn't figure out where his voice was coming from. Let him think Luke is still in the corridor, please...
The man just laughs. "Fortunately for me, I'm on home territory here, boy."
Luke grins. Leia made a tiny little gesture with her fingers, motioning towards herself: Dad is headed back this way. He reaches into his pockets for something else to throw and comes up with the two halves of a broken stylus; perfect.
The rough wood of the crates bites into his fingers as he gets a better grip and steadies himself. Then a surge upright and an overarm Force-assisted throw, and the stylus clatters as loudly as the credit did. Leia nods at him and stands up; Luke tosses her his lightsabre and makes his way, awkward step by awkward step, towards the front of the stack.
Dad is crouched there, eyes fixed on the doorway, tense and wary like nothing Luke's ever seen before, and for a moment he feels unreal, out of place: this is a game, but it isn't, his father is Anakin Skywalker, but he isn't, he's a Senator's son but he's a Rebel and a Jedi...
He is a Rebel and a Jedi. He is Anakin Skywalker's son.
The world rights itself again.
"Really, boy, that's just too clumsy," the Moff shouts. "If you're going to raid this place, at least do it well!"
"Oh, I think we have the upper hand," Leia calls out, taunting. The Moff laughs.
"Ah, really? Well, no longer. You've come to Nottingham once too often!"
Luke grins, too. He's almost on a level with Dad now, right behind him. "When this is over, my friend, there'll be no need for me to come again!"
"Your overconfidence will be your downfall, boy," the Moff snarls.
Luke straightens up to his full height and readies himself for the jump.
"It's not boasting if it's true."
Startled at hearing Luke's voice so close, Dad jumps up, turning towards Leia, and Luke jumps with a yell. Dad yells too, taken by surprise, and the two of them go down in a heap, flailing and shouting. Luke dashes Leia's sabre out of Dad's hand – there's a brief scuffle as they both go after it – a scuffle which ends with the point of Luke's sabre at Dad's throat.
"Your tyranny here is over, Imperial," Leia announces grandly, standing over them in triumphant pose.
Dad collapses back onto the floor, laughing delightedly. "I yield! I yield. I'm beaten – finally, thoroughly beaten. The day is yours."
Luke cheers, Leia smirks, and Dad carries right on laughing, blue eyes bright as he looked at them, pride and delight and love washing over them.
"Now, we'll head back and claim the loot," Leia says gleefully.
Dad sits up, little bubbles of laughter still escaping him. "You've earned it, I'll admit that. But the Kessel sentence still stands."
Luke groans in despair. "No! Seriously?"
"I can't believe you've never washed dishes at all before now," Leia says accusingly.
"Mom just generally grounded me a lot," Luke says blithely.
"Unfair," Leia says, glaring at Dad, who looks absolutely unrepentant.
"To the victor goes the spoils, but don't forget who's in charge around here."
Luke grins. "Yeah," he says. "Mom."
Dad starts to laugh again.
*********
They make hot chocolate in their tiny kitchenette back in their suite, whispering so as not to wake Mom, and sit down on the floor together, huddled in a corner thick as thieves. Anakin wants to know how Luke had managed to throw his voice like that while in the hangar bay, but Luke just shrugs.
"I don't know. I didn't want you to guess where I was. It just... worked."
Anakin nods. "Impressive."
"Oh," Luke says. "I think you'll find –" and then he stopped, face slightly pale. Anakin looks at him sharply, remembering earlier.
Leia glances from one to the other and sighs. "Is this a Jedi private thing I don't get to be around for?"
Anakin's about to say yes, and then he pauses. "I don't know," he says. "Is it?"
Luke shakes his head. Immediately, Leia reaches out and laces her fingers with his.
Anakin waits quietly, tamping down his worry and mutely inviting Luke to start talking, the same way Obi-Wan had used to for him, when he'd first come to the Temple.
When they'd still been able to talk without one of them completely mishearing everything the other said.
Stop that, Ani, his brother murmurs to him. A Jedi should not dwell overmuch on regrets.
Finally, Luke heaves a sigh. "I – this evening – I had a moment. A really weird one. Like... none of this was real. Like... it's not right. Like we're supposed to be someplace else. Doing something else."
Stars, Anakin misses Obi-Wan. He'd know what to do, surely. Know what to say to these too-bright, too-powerful, too-perceptive children of his Padawan's in order to reassure them. (In order to reassure Anakin himself.)
"OK," he says slowly. "What kind of something? I mean, where should we be?"
Luke shrugs helplessly. "Don't know," he says. "It just... somewhere else."
And then, after a brief pause, "Somewhere bad, I think. Don't you ever feel like that?" This last addressed to his sister.
Leia's frowning down at her hand, twined with her brother's. "Sometimes," she says. "Mostly... I felt like that a lot while we were at Madam Dormé's. Before we figured out we were twins. Like... it was almost where I was supposed to be. But not quite. Things were similar but wrong."
Anakin digests this in silence for a moment. "Should we maybe stop? The games, I mean."
"No!" the twins chorus, indignant.
"I love them," Leia says.
"They're brilliant," Luke tells him at the same time.
Anakin smiles. "All right then."
Leia frowns at him. "Don't you ever feel like that?"
He pauses. "Yes," he admits. "Yes, I do. Sometimes. Out of step. Out of touch with reality... I suppose everyone feels that way sometimes."
"What do you see?" Luke asks, curious. "When it happens?"
Anakin finds himself staring at a cabinet door as if the secrets of the universe were drawn upon its surface. Elsewhere. Dead dying trapped. Death but no blood, a clean death, clinical, impersonal, everywhere I go. Padmé, lost to me. The two of you, never here at all.
"Darkness," he says at last. "I see darkness."
They're silent then, the three of them. Huddled in their corner, hidden from the world.
The hot chocolate is getting cold.
Finally, Leia looks up. "Well," she says firmly. "If they're so bad. Maybe we should all just stop paying attention to them. Those weird times, I mean."
Her father and brother both stare at her. Then, softly, Anakin chuckles. "My ever-practical little girl. That's exactly what we're going to do."
"And that'll make 'em go away?" Luke asks doubtfully.
Anakin shrugs and smiles as gaily as he can, reassuring his son with a look and a touch to his tousled hair.
"Probably not," he says. "But... here. Let me tell you a secret."
Luke nods. Leia draws closer to him, eyes wide.
"Before you were born, I used to have these dreams, you see. I'd dream... well, I'd dream that Padmé was going to die in childbirth, when you were born."
"But she didn't," Leia says, understanding.
"Sometimes, a dream is just a dream," Anakin says. "Sometimes it's more than that. The trick is knowing the difference. And I can tell you right now that if ever you have any kind of dream where the four of us are not together, or you feel like we're all supposed to be in different places, or that bad things are happening to any of us... then it's just a dream, my loves. I would never permit that. Not ever. Not again."
It's not enough, but it is. It has to be. Visions of the future or memories of the past or warnings from another Force-user or brief moments in time when realities intersect and the ghosts of might-have-beens come whispering in to haunt them, Anakin doesn't know and isn't sure he cares.
They have no bearing on his reality. Perhaps they did, once upon a time before the Empire, but now his reality is a little different.
Scruffier, for one. More supply runs, less hot water.
More peace, more love.
Leia reaches up and kisses his chin, wet and chocolate-y. "We love you, Dad," she says.
Anakin kisses her back: first her forehead, then Luke's. "Leia darling, I don't care if you hate me to my dying day and beyond. As long as you remember how much I love you."
*********
Padmé stirs awake when Anakin slips back into bed with her. "Ani. Bad dreams?"
He kisses her temple, wraps his arms around her. She always feels so light in his embrace, small and fragile compared to his own bulk. He knows she loves that, but Force, sometimes he has a hard time believing that anyone so outwardly delicate could have born his boisterous children, much less put up with him for as long as she has, separations or no.
(And then she'll give him that Look of hers, and it's abundantly clear he's being a romantic-in-all-the-worst-ways melodramatic fool, but for some reason there's a part of her that thinks it's sweet, if occasionally annoying, and so he manages to get away with it.)
"Yes," he says, "but they're gone now."
Padmé smiles at him and her fingers, uncoordinated with sleep, brush along his jaw. "Sure?"
"We have a very wise daughter," Anakin tells her, "and a very brave and determined son."
His wife laughs quietly into his shoulder and tangles herself around him with a contented sigh.
*********
The next morning, at breakfast, Padmé pokes the half-full jar of hot chocolate mix and frowns at her bleary-eyed, yawning family.
"I could have sworn I had the last of this," she says.
"You must have been mistaken," Anakin says around a huge yawn.
Padmé studies him with narrowed eyes for several minutes. Then she transfers her gaze to the twins. "Busy night, you three?" she asks at last.
There's a slightly guilty silence. Finally, Anakin pours himself another cup of caf and says, "The Commander and Rogue Leader here raided an Imperial base, foiled a nefarious plot, defeated a Grand Moff in open combat and found the cure for nightmares, both the sleeping and the waking kind."
"Cure for nightmares, huh."
He grins at her while the twins squirm anxiously. "S'right."
"Secret cure?"
"It's a Jedi thing," Anakin says importantly.
The effect is ruined when Luke snorts.
"Sounds more like a Dad thing to me," Padmé says, and smiles at him.