A/N: ....I'll be no one even reads this story anymore, but here it is.
Espera made it out completely unharmed, but Nola's fast thinking saved her quite a bit of embarrassment. He'd 'accidentally' cut their connection to the greater NRNN before Vader stood to his full height and stormed off the set, only to be confronted by Luke (whose stern expression had no right to mar his sweet farmboy face). Though dwarfed by his father's immense figure, Luke seemed to be scolding him- jabbing his chest with one pointed figure and whispering hotly. Vader gave in after a few inaudible replies that caused Espera's bones to resonate with his grumblings; he turned around and resumed his seat, fists clenched at his sides.
"Let us resume," he said, as though he had not come within centimeters of choking the life from her. Espera nodded, acting cowed—for now.
"My apologies," she said, as soon as Nola gave her the thumbs up. Vader looked stunned. "For that interruption…must have a mynock feeding on our power lines…"
His face fell back into its usual scowl, and Espera flashed him her most brilliant grin before shuffling her papers and resuming her questions.
The rest of the interview was tame- a few questions about policy relating to the Hapes Consortium, the Chiss Ascendancy, a few human-supremacy groups and other radicals- which turned out to be a blow to their ratings.
"Don't answer that," she snapped, as Nola thumbed her chiming comm. He raised an eyebrow before flipping it open, wincing and slamming it shut again after a few seconds of angry screaming from the diminutive Rhodian on the other end.
"Have you been getting many of these?"
"More than I'd like," she muttered, darkly. "These people have no patience."
"What exactly did you promise them in ratings?"
"About a half billion less than actually tuned in," she said, massaging her temples with her fingers. Nola gave a low whistle.
"You are in hot water."
"Tell me something I don't know," she groaned, as her comm began to vibrate and chime again. She snatched it out of Nola's hand and flipped it open snarling "What do you want?" as Sal Ferron's form appeared in blue miniature.
"What in the Sith Hells was that, D'tol?"
"Sorry," she mumbled, massaging her temples once again. "I just thought—"
"Last night. What the blazing hells do you call last night—a friendly chat? I thought we were going to nail Vader, once and for all!"
"Coruscant wasn't built in a day, Ferron—"
"So you threw him softball questions about the Chiss and Hapes? Your signal gave out ten minutes in, but I doubt we missed anything really—"
"You missed me coming with an inch of death by asphyxiation," she cut in, briskly, "I'm sure this all looks very simple from your armchair, but if you want to be the one who wheedles something newsworthy out of Vader while dancing out of his reach, be my guest!"
"Because combing through Vader's clandestine records that were supposed to have been destroyed years and years ago is such a walk in the park," he said, rolling his eyes. "Are you finished making excuses? Because I've got something that might just balance out the bootlicking you did last night."
"Bootlicking--!"
"Meet me at headquarters in an hour if you're interested," he said, coolly, before signing off.
"Espera?" Nola asked, gently. "Why don't you let me take the comm? You look like you're about to crush it…"
"Don't let her in, Luke," Anakin said vehemently. He was nursing a lukewarm cup of caf-substitute (regular caf was hell on his damaged innards) and brooding—though from his seat in the very domestic-looking kitchenette, it seemed much more silly than imposing.
"Leia is not forbidden from our apartment because you are not forbidden from hers," Luke said, perhaps more harshly than he meant to. It was quite early, and neither of them had gotten much sleep last night. His father's stormy expression turned even grimmer as Luke continued to press his most sensitive buttons.
"She only wants to help—because she cares," he continued, emphatically, before sliding the door open. "Hello Leia, I—"
Leia didn't reply, and instead held up a flimsy print-out from the morning's news.
VADER OPENS UP! WILL HE TELL ALL? screamed the headlines, from above a still from the interview featuring a smiling D'tol and very, very surly Anakin. Luke peered over the top at his sister, whose lips were pressed together very firmly, and held her gaze until she couldn't bear it anymore and burst out laughing.
"What is so amusing?" Anakin grated.
"It's just…oh hells, it's so shameless! I never thought I'd read an article from New Aldera Daily that sounded like it was ripped from a tabloid…"
The flimsi was ripped from Leia's grasp by invisible hands and sailed across the room, where Anakin caught it and began reading intensely. The lines on his brow furrowed even deeper.
"You never can just ask, can you?" Leia snapped. Anakin did not look up. "Would it have taken too long to say 'Leia, may I'…?"
"In twenty years, the holonews industry has not become one centimeter less shallow or shameless," Anakin said, cutting her off. He balled up the flimsi and threw it down before stalking off to his quarters.
"I'm sure what he meant to say was 'good morning'," Luke said, too cheerily for the silence that followed his father's exit.
"You really do only see the absolute best in him," Leia sighed, helping herself to some of the caf Luke had been drinking. He carefully unfolded the news articles his father had crumpled.
"Behind the mask-- where is the Galaxy's charmer now?" Luke read aloud, his eyebrows threatening to disappear into his hairline. Two side-by-side pictures—one a screen capture of his father from the interview, presumably considering an answer, and one posed picture of a young man with a arrogant quirk to his lips and brown hair that flopped across his forehead.
"Is this…?"
"The caption reads 'The Hero With No Fear, 22 BBY,' but I have a hard time believing that's not some other Jedi- there were hundreds before the purges."
"No…there's something…familiar about his face," Luke answered, quietly. "That's our father, Leia."
"Anakin doesn't smile," she objected, but she rose from her seat to peer over his shoulder. "And he certainly never looks…cocky."
"You've seen him fly against me in the sims, Leia," Luke said, wearily. "You know how he can be…competitive." Leia finally nodded, though she looked unconvinced.
"Are there any articles about what he actually said?"
"A few," Leia replied as she pulled out her datapad, pulling up a carefully collected file of articles before handing it over to Luke, "but not many. I'll give Anakin this: he was actually quite…discreet."
"Will you say that to his face?" Luke asked, quietly.
"If he ever comes out of his room," Leia retorted. He gave her a sharp look before returning to his perusal. They sat in comfortable silence while Luke got caught up on the news and Leia sipped his caf.
"Oh, it looks like you left a joke article in here by accident," Luke said, after the initial shock of reading the headline ('How to Achieve the Lord Vader Look In Quick, Easy Steps)' several times in order to make sure he wasn't missing something faded. "There's a really cruel parody in here, I'm surprised it doesn't come with cartoons."
"Did I?" Leia asked, leaning over his shoulder, "Oh, no. That one's from the Imperial Remnant. It's real."
"No."
"Yes, it is! Look at the source!"
"This…we can't let him see this."
"It made Han spit caf all over the Falcon's dashboard when I sent it to him. He hasn't forgiven me yet."
"What," Espera asked, staring in disbelief at the ancient computer, "is that? Besides ancient, I mean. Oh, and useless." Nola coughed discreetly at the dust flying from the keyboard.
"You contacted me," Sal grunted, laying an almost reassuring hand on the top of the unit as it whirred and clunked pitifully. "You can either take what I'm offering or do it on your own."
Espera tapped her foot. She was still smarting from his earlier remarks, though she would hardly admit that to him.
"You say this computer belonged to the Jedi?"
"Sure did. Not the Coruscant Temple, though—came from the one of Corellia. I spent a lot of favors getting a hold of it, let me tell you."
"If the Jedi's secrets were this easy to get a hold of, why didn't the Empire know? Hell, why isn't someone else making a blaster that fires lightsabers right now?"
"It doesn't have anything that interesting, I'm afraid," Sal said, with the air of a teacher extending undue kindness to his slowest pupil, "the Empire did manage to wipe out most of their libraries. Things like this, however—logs, supply charts, miscellaneous housekeeping—was mostly overlooked."
"You want me to confront Vader with his old Jedi laundry list?"
Sal said nothing, he simply took his hands off the keyboard and folded his arms. Espera gritted her teeth.
"I didn't mean that. Your effort is outstanding," she said, as though each word pained her.
"You had better believe it is- I don't think the number of orders placed for magical Jedi laundry soap is any more interesting than you do," he said, apparently placated. "Here's the interesting bit," he turned the monitor to face both her and Nola.
"See here, this crèche list? It looks like the Jedi only took applicants as infants. All the 'younglings' are listed by name, species, and age—none of them appear on the list about after five years of age. Now, if I did a search for one Anakin Skywalker—"
"Nine's not that old," Espera said, feeling crushed. "He could have just been a…later bloomer, or something."
"But its nine years of his life we don't know anything about," Sal said, again with that infuriating, superior-sounding patience. "Nine years that no one knows about, apparently—I checked the citizen logs for every major sector. He doesn't appear once."
"So he comes from an Outer Rim planet with a dislike for paperwork," Espera answered. "They weren't really known as bastions of civilization, even during the Old Republic's reign."
"Skywalker's not that common a name, though—it hardly turns up on any census records. Criminal records, though…"
"Vader has a rap sheet?"
"We aren't that lucky. Turns out, one Shmi Skywalker was reported as kidnapped 67 BBY—with slavers as the most likely suspect."
"Keep going," Espera said, slowly.
"Turns out, the slave trade elites are a close-knit bunch with meticulous records—or they were, before one of their number was captured and their meticulous logs became public knowledge. One cleaning slave listed as 'Shmi' appears on liberated inventory rolls multiple times—though around 42 BBY her price suddenly spikes. Doubles, in fact—she's listed as being pregnant."
"And?"
"From there we have the pieces, but not the whole picture. Shmi goes to auction 40 BBY and disappears from the records entirely. However, nine years later we have reports of requests for aid from the Hutt syndicate—turns out a riot over a podrace turned nasty."
"Why do we care, Sal? Get on with it!"
"Turns out, people lost a lot of money on this particular race- they claimed it was rigged. No human's supposed to be able to survive a podrace, let alone win one—though the officials refuse retract their statement that one nine-year-old human male, last name Skywalker, won the Boonta Eve Classic."
"You think Vader was a pod racing boy wonder," Espera said, her voice laden with disbelief.
"Shmi's baby would be nine Standard years old—and it would explain how the Jedi found out about some backwater slave having…well, whatever it was they were looking for."
Espera hissed. "That's a good theory, really…but we just don't have the proof to back it up. Nothing's substantial here."
"I won't waste your time with anything insubstantial, you know me better than that—do you remember the Trade Federation's blockade of Naboo?"
"Vaguely. I never could figure out what all of it was about, other than an excuse for the Empire to criticize the democratic process."
"Exactly. I thought it was more than a little boring, myself—but it turns out that was going on more or less the same time as these pod race riots. And in this article—" here he switched to his personal datapad—"a young Queen Amidala presents a posthumous award of bravery to one Qui-Gon Jinn, and two other awards- one to a Jedi Knight Obi-Wan Kenobi, and one to his padawan Anakin Skywalker."
Espera couldn't breathe. About a thousand thoughts tried to make themselves heard at once, resulting in her brain simply shutting down for a few seconds.
"There's a holo," Sal said, grinning smugly.
"Pull it up! Pull it up!"
The file seemed to load with purposeful slowness. "Here we've got the queen…here's the then-Senator Palpatine…there's are Jedi, so this…" Sal zoomed in on the tiny figure.
"We're all thinking it," Nola cut in, after a moment of silence, "so I'll just say it—Vader's adorable."
