AN:So here we are, fifteen days out from school starting. I doubt I'll get another chapter up before then, but I shall try. It should be easier without battles to write, my main personal obstacle. This project is rather daunting, trying to tie up all the loose ends. Hope that you are all still enjoying this.
Executor, In Orbit around Dantooine, 39:6:25
Wilhuff Tarkin surveyed the surface of Dantooine as he listened to reports of various activities. Grievous had come to him, tail between his legs after the near-disastrous destruction of Cloud City. There were other routes that had been secured for bringing supplies into Endor, but none that had the capacity that Cloud City had afforded them.
Two months earlier, the laser system had been completed on the Death Star, and tested on one of Endor's barren moons. Four weeks earlier, their supply trains had been strangled by Grievous. He was definitely out of Immolious's graces, but she hadn't been around to enforce his superiority. So he had seen to it that Grievous knew without a doubt who was in charge. He was still useful enough to keep around, but not so much that Tarkin couldn't make him believe that he would dispose of him if he got too troublesome.
Immolious had spent some time planning war strategy with him, and he felt that whatever delay she had been under, it was not something she would want him to wait for. Time was of the essence; if the Jedi got time to organize, then there would be no hope for the Confederacy, but now, while there was still disorganization, it was possible for him to strike, and make a dent in the opposition. He had been watching the Republic Fleet that had organized around Dantooine recently. They would be gone for two more days, if their patterns held, plenty of time to organize a fight and suppress any sort of Jedi response in the Outer Rim. If the Temple of Dantooine could be destroyed, there was a good chance that they would retreat to Alderaan or Naboo, leaving the whole of the Outer Rim unprotected, and in his grasp.
"General Grievous, begin landing your troops. This will be just the start of a glorious war, one that will leave the Galaxy ordered and secure for a change," he said, turning to the droid General.
"Yes, Star Marshal," Grievous said, Tarkin could hear the contempt in his voice and considered calling him to task on it, but decided against it. It would take all of his time to teach the more-than-half-machine monstrosity manners. The clank of Grievous' departure even grated on Tarkin's nerves. But not as much the presence of defensive shields over all of the population centers, meaning that he had to send in ground troops, which would take time, and resources. Droids took less time to replace than flesh and blood troops would've, but they only had so much manufacturing capacity, much of which would be lost once the Republic got organized. It was irksome, but nothing could be done about it. In the end both the Confederacy and the Republic would be at replacement parity, which meant he needed to maintain his initial advantage. His problem was that the principle manufacturing centers of the Confederacy were in the Colonies, particularly in the Corporate Sector. He couldn't hope to hold it, only bloody the Republic's nose in losing it, hopefully enough to make them timid about offensives until the Death Star could be made operational once again. The escape from Endor had done enormous amounts of damage. The super laser was no longer operational, several key components having been destroyed. They would not be easy to replace, now that the war had started. Tarkin frowned.
"The first landing craft are away, no resistance thus far, sir," a Nemoidian crew member reported.
"Good, at least our intelligence network was able to get something right," Tarkin said, and settled in to watch events unfold.
Coruscant, Jedi Temple, Skywalker Central, 39:6:25
Obi-Wan looked up from the report he was reading as Jaedrea walked into the room. She looked like she had been crying, and had her journal hanging limply from one hand. He marked his place, and then shut the datapad down.
"Master?" she asked, her voice trembling slightly.
"Come here, Padawan," he told her gently, and opened his arms. She ran to him, tears threatening again.
He held her, letting her work through the awful despair at her own pace, stroking her hair and saying small comforting things to her until she was ready to talk about what had brought on the tears. "Master?" she asked, but it was muffled, directed at his chest.
He put two fingers under her chin and made her look at him. "Yes, Jaedrea?" he asked quietly, a comforting smile on his face.
"Am I a bad person?" she asked earnestly, her eyes searching his.
"No, Jae," he said, putting his arms more tightly around her, giving her a bit of a squeeze. "You have just been in some bad situations."
She opened the journal, flipping to the entry he had suspected was likely her problem; it was one a few days after her Padawaning, where she had done something a bit out of character. She had pushed a young boy. "But what about this?"
"Jaedrea, one bad day does not make you a bad person."
She chewed on her lower lip as she thought about it. "I don't understand."
"Well, everyone has times when their judgment is not the best. So long as you can realize and admit when you make mistakes, you should be fine."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes. It is only when you persist in pursuing bad judgments that you encounter problems."
Satisfied for the moment, she flipped several more pages, skimming to find entries she had questions about. "Do I know Djem So?"
"I'm sure you do, but it's not something you are going to be learning for a while, so I wouldn't worry about it if I were you."
"What if I don't remember before I start learning it for real?"
"We will worry about it when we get there."
Jaedrea nodded, satisfied for the moment. Another page, another question. "What about our bond?" she asked, and he scanned the entry.
"It has opened fully."
"So it's ok?"
"Yes, Padawan. Some things take longer than others. Perhaps when you are a bit older, you will understand that better."
"Ok," she said, already hunting down the object of her next query. "Here," she said, pointing. "It talks about what Sid says making more sense than what you say."
"Well?"
"But he's a Sith," she told him, as though he were missing something obvious.
"You didn't know that then," he reminded her.
"But don't the Sith lie all the time?"
He sighed. The world was so black and white in the eyes of someone so young. "They lie if it suits their purpose, but the best lie is one built on a core of truth."
"Like when I believed that Jaz wasn't going to be a good Jedi because she's different?"
"That is probable. She is different, but it makes her special, not unworthy."
"I know, Master. I love my sister," she said, in the way that meant she didn't remember it ever having been any other way. She was searching again, looking for something else that had bothered her enough to bring it up to him.
"What else did you want to know about?" he asked as she read an entry more thoroughly than the rest.
"Was Mom sick?"
"Not that I recall. She was pregnant, though no one knew it at the time."
"Oh, yeah," she said, continuing with her hunt. "What is there to understand about the Soresu that I'm not getting, or wasn't?"
"The philosophy. You aren't the only one to have problems with that, though. It's not complicated, but it can be a difficult tenant to accept for oneself."
"Because it's about peace and defense and not action and war?"
"That's a part of it, but it's good that you've gotten that far with it. We can discuss it another day, when we have a bit more time."
"Like in a couple of days when I don't have school?" she asked pleadingly.
He smiled. "That would be a good day, yes," he agreed.
"Jasmine told me that the Force was holding its breath," she told him, indicating the later part of the entry that the book was open to.
"I suppose that is one way to put it," he said, and satisfied, she turned back to her journal.
He waited as she looked for another passage that had piqued her curiosity. "Is the way you treat your Padawans supposed to be different?"
"It is different. There is no way that it could be the same," he told her, and she looked confused. "I was a very young man when your father became my Padawan," he continued, "Unmarried, just Knighted. By the time I got to Mara, I was married with three children and had been a Master for over ten years. I learned from the mistakes I made with Anakin, and I did make mistakes. I made new ones with Mara, which I learned from before I got you. And Mara and Anakin are very different people, who reacted differently to me."
"Oh," she accepted what he said, and after mulling it over, she said, "Ok."
"Anything else?"
She nodded. "Only one."
"Let's hear it," he said.
"'Power comes from knowledge,'" she said, reading directly from the book, "'But knowledge also comes from power…If power comes from knowledge, and Jedi seek knowledge, they receive power in return. If you seek power, does knowledge truly come from out of the power you've sought?'"
Obi-Wan sighed. It was a difficult question that she asked, at least to put into terms she could understand and accept. "Power doesn't exactly get you knowledge, but perhaps more accurately access to knowledge. I suppose that one could look at it as a cycle. A level of knowledge gives you a level of power, and with it access to more knowledge. Once that knowledge is obtained, you gain access to more knowledge, with the granting of more power."
"So power isn't really something to be sought?"
"Unless you want to be a Sith, no. It is only a means to more knowledge, and an acknowledgement of the learning you have already done."
Jaedrea sighed, snuggling into his chest more securely. He held her, letting her draw comfort from his presence. She was unique among everyone he had dealt with. Her dealings with the Sith had come at such a tender age, splashing shades of grey into her world much faster than she would have learned to see on her own. Jasmine had learned to see them much earlier, but it was a product of her personality and her unique view of the Force. Julia, who would probably be his standard, at least for this, was still coloring Jaedrea as completely bad, and it was hurting both of them. Jasmine had said something about having talked to her, when she had spoke to him for a moment after their class this morning, but he hadn't seen the fruits of that effort yet.
He hoped Jaedrea was going to be strong enough to deal with all of this, but it was coming at her so fast that it was like she was standing still in the Coruscanti traffic, being buffeted every which way by the passing speeders, never having enough time to recover from one hit before the next came. Seeing it and being able to stop it were two different things. For now, all he could do was patch up the hurts, and hope that the next hit would get her out of the traffic lanes so he could actually help her.
Dantooine, Jedi Temple, Anakin's Quarters, 39:6:25
Anakin was awake and half-dressed when a clone chimed his door. Something was up; he just wasn't sure what yet. "Enter," he commanded.
"High General Skywalker," he said, and Anakin motioned for him to continue while he pulled his shirt on. "General Solo has requested your presence."
To this statement he raised an eyebrow, but the clone was not forthcoming with any other information. "Get General Skywalker and Commander Skywalker up as well, and have them meet us in the briefing room."
"Yes, sir," the clone said, saluting him smartly then leaving.
Anakin grumbled to himself as he shoved his feet into his boots, and then threw a cloak on, homing in on his eldest daughter's Force Signature.
She was in the comm center. He waited just inside the door for her to acknowledge him, but she didn't.
Finally, he walked up next to her, asking, "So what did you drag me out of bed for? This had better be good."
"We're under attack," she said, still examining something on the battle board, the soft illumination of the glowing circles and representations of resources being the only thing lighting the room.
He was curious, so he said, "Well, it doesn't sound like an attack is underway," in a tone that both sounded skeptical and sarcastic.
"Troops haven't hit the ground yet," she said, harshly, and he probably deserved it. "We picked up the communications jammer twenty minutes ago."
His eyes went a little wide at that. "Show me," he ordered, and she pointed to the frequency monitor and the readout that concerned her.
"This," she said, pointing to an odd grouping of oscillations on the screen. He frowned. The channel wasn't one that was normally monitored, and probably for obvious reasons. You couldn't communicate on it, because all sorts of weird stuff operated on that frequency… including communications jammers.
"I am impressed," he said finally.
"It wasn't my idea," she said quietly, probably thinking of the person who had come up with it.
He nodded. "Come, we need to put something of a battle plan together before they do start landing troops," he said, and then headed for the briefing room and his other two children.
Coruscant, Jedi Temple, Skywalker Central, 39:6:25
Jasmine was curled in a ball on her sleep couch, her arms curled around her legs, fists stacked under her chin, her only movement was to occasionally reach down to the datapad in front of her, tapping the button that pulled up the next page of information. She was reading, for the third time, her Political Strategy homework. She was lucky, despite attending six classes, more than either of her sisters; she only had homework in three of them. Lightsaber class, of course, didn't have homework in the traditional sense, no matter who taught it, so that was something both Jae and Jul had going for them as well. Galactic History took less time than Political Strategy, but it was because she was only required to read and summarize, or answer a list of questions, memorize a list of dates for an upcoming test, and other things of that nature. It was similar to the Initiate-level classes of the same title, and for that was slightly boring.
Advanced Force Applications, which Master Luke had dutifully enrolled her in as he'd promised, was not unlike her Lightsaber class; there was really not any way to give homework. Qui-Gon's Living Force class was a completely different sort of class, one that adults took as well, and for that, no homework would be given.
She was in an Advanced Math class, after Luke had persuaded her to take and do her absolute best on a placement test of her more mundane skills. Jaedrea hadn't even scored half as well as she had, and Julia only did as well as she had on the math portions because, Jasmine suspected, she could translate most of the math problems into something to do with flying. Julia had tested well, but had chosen to go into the same class as Jaedrea, and would probably be in a Technical Math class next.
She sighed, realizing that her mind had wandered, albeit briefly, and she focused more thoroughly on the task at hand. This was her last reading before she would have to go ask Cedric, or, if he still wasn't home, as was often the case, Obi-Wan about the eccentricities of this particular system. She disliked the amount of work that she had to put into this class, but she was determined to prove that she could. Sometimes it took her a long time to get the concept that was being presented, but eventually she did, and once she did, it made sense. She wasn't sure that it was entirely necessary, but Luke thought so, and so she took it seriously. She wanted to make him proud of her.
She heard her bedroom door open, and she sighed as she shut down her datapad. She was finished reading the passage, but it made no more sense than it had the first time she'd read it. A quick probe of her parent's quarters revealed a definitive lack of masculine energy. Obi-Wan it was. She shook her curly hair out of her face, having unbraided it once she'd gotten home, as she looked up, expecting Mara.
It was, instead, Jaedrea. She smiled at her sister, genuinely glad to see her. She was usually happy to see most anyone in her family, but having almost lost Jae once, she was especially glad to see her most days. "Jasmine?" her voice was quiet, as though she was afraid of disturbing Jasmine.
"Hi, Jae. Did you need something?" she asked as she uncurled from her study position, stretching out her short legs. Not that they were really short to her, but that she would never be tall had been something more or less put to her again four months ago at their yearly check-ups. Jaedrea was already twenty-three centimeters taller than her, and Julia was eighteen. Curious, she'd asked Celia's Master about it, and Master Allie had told her that she was only slightly taller, about half a centimeter, than Leia had been at nine. She knew already Leia was the shortest of her grown and nearly grown siblings. Cedric was already taller than Luke, who was taller than his twin by twenty centimeters or so, and Celia was also already a few centimeters taller than Leia. Liz was only about five centimeters shorter than their father. She'd definitely inherited the short genes.
"I was wondering something," Jaedrea said, nerves getting to her, and it wasn't even going to be something big.
Not big enough to make ripples, at any rate. Jasmine frowned a bit at the errant thought. "So, what do you want to ask me?" she prompted.
"Is it normal to have nightmares?"
"I have nightmares a lot, and it's probably because I can't shield properly, and I get invested in other people's nightmares," she said sighing. She ran her hand through her hair, and started to put it back so that she could re-braid it, and Jaedrea came all the way into the room, to help her. It would look sloppy if she did it herself, but she was rather irritated at her hair for being so insanely curly. "And Master Allie did say that your memories might come out in your dreams, depending on how ready you are to face your past. What's been going on?"
"I see flashes of stuff, but I'm not sure whether it's memories or imagination or a combination of the two, or just weird creepy stuff," Jaedrea said, relaxing a little as she had something physical to concentrate on. Jasmine smiled, grateful for the seemingly random impulses that she had from the Force or whatever it was that prompted her to do the odd random important things she did.
"Maybe you could talk to Master Allie about it," she suggested gently.
She felt Jaedrea shake her head, and glanced in the mirror on her dressing table for confirmation. "None of the images are concrete enough to make sense yet. It's all so random."
"Meditation?" she suggested.
She could feel the slight motion as Jaedrea nodded. "I haven't talked to Master Obi-Wan about it yet, but I suspect that's what he will say, too."
"Well, why don't we ask him? I have to ask him about my homework anyway."
Jaedrea made a face as she slid off Jasmine's sleep couch in search of a tie, handing the end of her braid to her. "I so do not envy you being in that class."
"That's not what you said the first time you got the news I was going to be in that class," she said with a hint of laughter.
She shrugged. "What can I say? I wasn't exactly myself."
"I know, Jae," she agreed, and put the tie Jae had found on her dressing table around the end of her braid and flipped it back over her shoulder. "Let's go. No time like the present."
She made another face as the two of them walked into Luke and Mara's common room. "Mara?" she called.
"Yes?" Mara answered from their bedroom.
"I'm going with Jae to Master Obi-Wan's. I'll be back for dinner?" she said, hanging on to the door frame, as Mara looked at her from the sleep couch.
"That's fine, Jaz," she said with a yawn. She'd been napping, tired since Ardrya was due in about a month.
"Do you want to eat at Mom and Dad's tonight? You sound tired."
"That would be fine. Since you're headed that way, do you mind popping in and letting your mother know?"
She nodded. The thought of eating her mother's cooking wasn't the most horrific thing she'd ever thought of, but there weren't many things that were really much lower on the list. Getting eaten by a rancor, but she couldn't think of anything else at the moment.
They left, stopping at the next door, looking in on their mother. Jaedrea hung back while Jasmine bounded into the room. "Mommy," she said, bouncing onto the sofa.
"Don't do that, Jasmine, it's not good for the furniture," she said, not looking up from her datapad.
"Okay," she agreed petulantly. "Mara's taking a nap right now; can we come over for dinner?"
"I haven't even thought about dinner," she said, sighing and putting down her datapad. "Maybe we can order something in," she mused.
"Thank you, Mommy!" she said, throwing her arms around her mother's neck, then she was gone in a flash again, but she could hear her mother's amused laughter chasing her out, as she took her sister's hand and they headed for Jaedrea's Master's quarters.
Dantooine, Jedi Temple, Briefing Room, 39:6:25
Luke hoped that whatever was going on wasn't just his father demanding that they get more battle experience. One look at his twin, as she walked into the room behind their father, told the tale. He'd seen that look on her face before, somewhere between battle-hardened commander and fearful princess. "Starting a bit early, are we?" he asked casually, putting his arm around Leia, trying to help her leech her anxiety off through the Force, just as he'd done many time before, before he'd known she was his sister. On some level, he had always known they were connected, but not that they were twins, though the identical birthdates ought to have given them a clue. It simply hadn't occurred to either of them that they were related.
She smiled up at him, the way she used to, he thought to make Han jealous, but he realized now it was just the way she smiled at him because she was happy to see him. "We need to put something together before the CIS starts landing troops."
He nodded, and they looked at Elizabeth, who had suddenly gone white, and was stammering. "I-I-I can't," she started faintly.
"You can and you will. Where is the Fleet?" their father questioned her, "We will need to let them know what's going on."
Elizabeth shuffled through a dozen pieces of flimsiplast. "Tatooine, Ord Cestus, Anx Minor, somewhere close," she mumbled to herself as she looked for the schedule. She found the flimsi that had the military fleet's schedule, running her finger down it until she came to their current location. "Anx Minor, but only for the next couple of hours. They are supposed to jump to hyperspace headed for Gravlex Med in a couple of hours, and be there all of the day," she looked up at the chrono, "Today, and tomorrow as well. They aren't scheduled to be back here until the morning after."
"We need the Fleet to be able to engage their fleet in battle. It will distract them from the ground battle," he turned to Leia. "Can we get a message out through the jammers?"
She shook her head. "There are ways, but it takes encryptions on both ends, overscramblers that we don't have."
He nodded. "How difficult are they to get a hold of?"
"They would have to be constructed, but they aren't too hard to put together, but they have to be done in pairs. I've done it before."
"Later then. Someone has to get past the CIS's fleet to get a message out to ours."
"I'll go," Leia said.
"You can't pilot well enough to get through droids, Leia," their father told her. He frowned. "Luke, you should go. Leia may go, as well, if you would rather have her than another gunner."
Luke nodded. "Should I take anyone else?"
"Do you need anyone else?" Anakin asked, "You'll have to take the Ranger as it is, but I'd rather not risk more people than I have to."
"We can go alone. Leia and I work well enough as a team."
"Don't get yourselves killed. I don't want to have to tell your mother," he said, and they knew he was just trying to mask his own concern.
"Yes, Dad," the twins said at the same time, and they each hugged him from the side.
"Be careful, you two," he said, planting a kiss on the top of Leia's head, and after a moment's consideration, another on Luke's.
"Now, Elizabeth," he said, turning to their sister and disengaging himself from them, "You have a battle to plan."
"Me?" she squeaked.
"What do you think I've been making you do for the last week?" Anakin asked with some irritation. Luke and Leia walked out and the door closed behind them before she could come up with a coherent response.
"Are droids really that different?"
"When you're going up against them in battle. You battled them on Bespin; what do you think?"
"I couldn't feel them, but I could still anticipate them."
"You have to be able to do both. It's not a bad thing, and don't worry about it. Dad knows that I operate a ship as though it is an extension of my own body, and you don't. It just isn't in you to do it; Julia is the only other one of us who does it."
"And Dad."
"Yes, and Dad."
Leia sighed, still gathering herself for her role in the coming battle. She was usually somewhat pensive pre-battle, and the Jedi gig made her more so.
"We'd better get hopping. I'd like to get out of here while they are still setting up their pickets; it will be easier to sneak past."
Coruscant, Jedi Temple, Skywalker Central, 39:6:25
"In case I need to be killed."
Over and over the sentence resounded inside Cedric's head, giving him no peace. There was an hour between breakfast and the usual start of his meetings, when, depending on how the previous night had gone, he either took a nap, or meditated, or gathered notes and did research.
Today, he wrote out detailed terms and conditions for his mother's meeting with Sev'rance. Not that she'd given him much in the way of instructions that he could use to put together into such a report, but he likely knew her better than any other being on the planet, including herself.
He knew his mother about that well, also, and knew if she could abide by the letter of an agreement and cheat, she would.
An alarm sounded from his wall chrono, startling him. He looked up, biting back a curse. He wasn't going to be able to word what he wanted any tighter, and more work on it would only be to make it more flowery, and it really didn't need that. He got up, throwing his black cloak over his shoulders, and went to his parents' room.
"Here," he said, tossing the datapad onto his mother's desk, using a small exertion of the Force to make sure it landed where he wanted it to, just out of her reach. "If you have questions, I should be home before dinner."
He walked out of their quarters, his long strides taking him quickly to the landing pad. He sighed in relief as the public transport pulled away from the building and out of reach of his mother.
Dantooine, Jedi Temple, Bright Hope Ranger, 39:6:25
Leia put the headset that her brother handed her on. "I wish Han was here for this," he said to her.
"And then we'd be in that hunk of junk he calls a ship," she said, smiling letting herself drift in memories, "We sure could use her, provided she was in a good mood. I swear there are times I think that ship is jealous of me."
"Come on, sis, the Falcon isn't so bad now. Sure, it still looks like it is, but it's just a well maintained as any craft in the Jedi hangers," he said, sliding into the pilot's chair.
She sat in the copilot's chair, doing pre-flight checks, as they prepared to take off. The Bright Hope Ranger was a YT-2400, a newer, larger model than the YT-1300. That didn't make it better. It was, in fact, about the least attractive model that Corellian Engineering Corporation had produced. Ugly was not a strong enough word for the ship. She wasn't even sure why they had bought any of the 2400's, since the 1300's were still in production. They were at least mostly symmetrical, and had a certain aesthetic quality to them.
Coruscant, Jedi Temple, Skywalker Central, 39:6:25
Padmé sighed as Cedric left the room; he was running, or as least as much as his dignity would let him run. She reached over and picked up the datapad, curious as to what he'd left her. Surely it couldn't be something to do with Immolious. But that was, indeed exactly what it was. It was almost formal in tone, but she could see that Cedric had been the one writing it. He liked grandiose words like stipulations. It was so very young and bright-eyed of him that she laughed a little to herself as she read.
She was impressed that Tann, I do need to start thinking of her as something other than Immolious, had even accepted, much less with as little fuss as she seemed to want with this. Padmé could meet her, and Cedric's attendance would be required. Luke's presence would be preferable to Anakin's but either would do. The rest was just Cedric putting things in to make it look like more. Formalities, like the legal junk at the bottom of contracts in small print so that your eyes glossed over it and few people actually read. No guards, no weapons, well, none beyond lightsabers.
She wondered if the preference for Luke over Anakin was hers or Cedric's, but decided it didn't matter. She would ask him if both could be included, making things a bit simpler in one regard, though more difficult in another. She put aside thoughts of her younger son's problems along with the datapad, and began work in earnest on some bits of legislation that would smooth the transition from the Old Republic to the New.
Dantooine, Jedi Temple, Command Center, 39:6:25
Elizabeth walked over to her father; he'd been silent since Luke and Leia and left to get help. "Ok, what's your defense plan?" he asked.
"What do you mean my defense plan?" she asked, not believing her ears.
"How are you going to keep the shields up?"
"Huh?"
Her father sighed, "I'm sorry I have to do this, kitten, but I need you to coordinate the ground defense, I know you don't think you are ready for this, but I NEED you. The clones are good, don't get me wrong, but they don't think big picture, you give them a target and they'll defend it or destroy it, but they can't pick the targets," Anakin said.
Cody made a sound that sounded suspiciously like a cough.
"Well, as a general rule they can't," he said smiling at the clone.
"I need help Dad," Elizabeth said.
"That's what I'll be providing, but the help you need, not the help you want."
"You won't be here?"
"No, I'll be leading what fighters we have to shoot down as many of their landers as we can, try to buy you time to get to the main power junction."
"You don't want me to defend the Temple?"
"Not directly."
"But the exercises?"
"Were general practice, not specific for this; I thought we'd have more time."
"Oh…"
"Now, I'm going to the hanger; get the troops moving," he said, standing up.
He was gone before she whispered, "Yes, Daddy."