Lars's Kitchen

Lars Farm

Tatooine

1 day later

"Anakin never told me about his experiences while a child slave of Gardulla the Hutt," Obi-Wan said sadly, his eyes fixed on Padme Skywalker.

Padme huffed and raised one eyebrow, "Of course he didn't, Obi-Wan."

Kenobi looked puzzled, "Why do you say, of course he didn't? I was his master. I should have been there for him."

Padme straightened up and reached for a lamta fruit in a bowl on the counter.

"Obi-Wan, you are even more emotionally constipated than Anakin is," she stated matter-of-factly as she took a bite of the lamta.

"Emotionally constipated," the Jedi repeated in a dry tone, "what a charming verbal picture, Senator."

Padme rolled her eyes and sighed, "Kenobi, the Jedi disdained Anakin from the start for his past. He wasn't brought up 'properly' in the Jedi Temple from an early age. He'd been a slave. He loved his mother, as horrible as that was ..."

"It wasn't horrible," Obi-Wan protested. "We never said it was. We were merely concerned about his fears and his attachment ..."

"Yes, to his mother. Who worked her fingers to the bone to raise him and protect him from a life which was far too dreadful for most children to cope with in a healthy way. And then you all were surprised when Anakin bonded to Palpatine, who did accept him."

Kenobi frowned at the woman, who was standing with hands clenched, her lamta set on the table for now.

"You are angry," he said in surprise.

"I'm furious," she agreed with a bite in her tone and a dangerous glitter in her eyes. "Furious. Furious with Palpatine, who manipulated Ani. Furious with Ani, for falling for it. Furious with myself, for not realizing that Anakin needed me more than the generic galaxy did. Furious with the Jedi, for their timeworn and dangerously unhealthy system of raising children ..."

Now Kenobi was indignant, "What are you talking about, Padme? The babies and toddlers and younglings were kept safe and secure. They were cared for well until your husband marched in and slaughtered them."

He stopped, horrified at his words, and waited for Padme to slap him across the face.

She didn't.

"Obi-Wan," Padme said gently. "I cannot put into words how much I adore Luke and Leia. I would gladly die for them. Did it never occur to you that there was something deeply unnatural about parents giving their children away to the Jedi, to never see them again? Do you really think it was easy or healthy or normal for those children to be torn away from their family of origin and thrust into a new and completely alien environment?"

Kenobi blinked in astonishment and slowly shook his head, "It ... I was raised this way ... the children needed to be raised by those who could properly train them to use their Force powers."

"Why?" the woman asked simply.

"Because," the Jedi Master began, then stuttered to a stop.

"The galaxy needed the Jedi," he tried after thinking hard. "The gift of the Force was needed for the many peoples of the galaxy, and it was right for us to take those children and help them utilize their gift in a way that served many."

Padme looked skeptical, and continued to wait.

"If I said that we trained this way for a thousand generations, would you throw that lamta at me?" he asked nervously.

She chuckled now, though she still looked upset, "I am sorely tempted, Obi-Wan."

She grabbed the fruit and took another bite even as she strode over to a window and looked outside. In the distance, she could see Anakin and Owen leaning over a no doubt irritable moisture 'vaporator.

"I've had a lot of time to just think lately, Obi-Wan," she continued. "At night, when I'm nursing the babies, I think about my own past. Was I truly ready to be queen as a young teenager? Maybe not. I'm brilliant in my own way, but I was so young. But I became queen because on Naboo, that's the way things are done."

"You were a wonderful queen," Kenobi assured her. "Your people loved you."

She shrugged as she turned back, "I did a reasonably good job. My point is that just because a culture or organization does something a certain way doesn't mean it is healthy, nor does it mean that methods and philosophies shouldn't change with time. I think the Jedi had very good intentions, Obi-Wan. In fact, I know they did. You and your fellow Jedi did a great deal of good. But you failed to acknowledge that feelings are real and must be dealt with, not repressed. You failed to spy the Sith Lord in your midst, you failed my husband, and you failed the galaxy."

Obi-Wan sighed and waited for the woman to continue dismantling the foundations of his galactic view, but Padme merely chewed on her food.

"What do you suggest?" Kenobi finally asked in a subdued voice.

Padme smiled sadly, "I actually don't have many suggestions right now, Obi-Wan. I'm shaken too, to realize how much I failed my husband and my people in paving the way for Palpatine to become Chancellor. But this is a certain thing, Obi-Wan – Anakin is not emotionally capable of facing Palpatine any time soon. He is feeling all those emotions that he tried to suppress for so many years and he is a dangerous man. But you know that."

This reference to Darth Vader made Kenobi shiver slightly.

"I still have a hard time believing that Anakin turned to the Dark Side, even briefly. Many individuals experience tragically difficult childhoods and few become raging, psychotic Sith Lords."

"Few are able to, Kenobi," Padme interrupted angrily. "Don't you see? Traumatized sentients fill this galaxy. They become petty criminals or slavers themselves, or bounty hunters, or spice addicts. Some work through their emotional upheaval and become upstanding citizens. But only Anakin is the most powerful Force user of his generation, only he is the supposed 'Chosen One' of prophecy! You and the Jedi taught Anakin how to harness his power and then all of us put pressure on him to be strong and powerful and steady and we disregarded his fears and ... and he cracked. He cracked. I hate what he did, Kenobi, but I will always love him and I will protect him from you and the remaining Jedi who would use him for your own vendetta against the Sith. Is that clear?"

Kenobi blinked and shuffled back a step.

"Yes, it's clear," he said meekly. "I understand. Sort of. I agree that Anakin isn't stable enough ..."

He breathed in and out and straightened his spine, "This conversation is making my head and heart hurt, Senator. Can I please go out and milk the banthas? It is soothing."

"By all means," the woman said with an imperious wave of one hand, just as the door to the kitchen opened and Beru Lars stepped in.

"Beru!" Padme said with a smile, stepping forward to give her sister-in-law a quick hug.

"Padme," Beru replied with a somewhat shaky smile. A moment later, Beru fixed her eyes on the lamta fruit, paled, and bolted for the refresher off the kitchen.

Padme stared in distress and alarm as the sounds of retching emanated from the woman

"Beru, are you all right?" she cried out.

"I ... I'm just going now. To milk the banthas. Right now." Kenobi stated, sidling out of the door surreptitiously.

The former queen ignored him and walked quickly forward just as Beru emerged, wiping her mouth off with a towel.

"Are you all right?" Padme repeated.

"Yes. I just can't stand the smell of lamta fruit," Beru explained, "but I couldn't be better."

There was a pause, and Padme's face lit up with a glorious smile, "Beru, really?"

"Really! I'm 10 weeks along."

"Oh Beru."

The two women hugged again before Padme stepped back.

"So you are quite sick, then?"

"Yes, and ... I think that is a good sign, as uncomfortable as it is. I wasn't sick at all with the baby I lost."

The other woman groaned, "I was quite sick with the twins the first trimester and it is rough, but I agree that it is probably a good sign. Oh Beru, I'm so happy for you and Owen!"

/

Skywalker (Cloudseeker) Farm

Tatooine

3 months later

"Anakin!"

Anakin Skywalker leaped toward the door of the workshop in the time it took for Padme's frantic call to penetrate his mind. He'd been struggling with R2D2's motivator and had missed the approach of ...

Anakin jumped over a fence and bounded into the back door of the farmhouse just in time to see a tall and ugly Rodian push Padme against a wall. Padme was holding both babies, who were screaming loudly in distress.

"Shut those kids up before I do it for ..." the Rodian began, even as Darth Vader, eyes molten with rage, gestured and sent the alien flying fatally against the wall.

The two other thugs in the room turned immediately to face this totally unexpected threat. Both were human, both slovenly and hairy, and both died within seconds by blue lightsaber.

"Anakin, they are taking our water!" Padme exclaimed, gesturing with her chin toward the front door.

Vader stormed out the front door to find, indeed, that four more grimy individuals – two human, one Dug, and one Twi'lek – were helping themselves to the water from one of the main storage tanks.

Vader gritted his teeth and strode forward in a rage.

"Ani, we need information about who sent them," Padme said softly from behind him.

He took a deep breath and forced himself to relax, even as he turned off his lightsaber.

"What are you doing?" Vader demanded coldly.

The four hoodlums looked startled and the taller human, a red haired individual of approximately Anakin's height and build, frowned as he gazed in bewilderment at the lightsaber in Skywalker's hand.

"What in the Sarlacc are you doing with a lightsaber? And why are your eyes all weird and yellow?" he demanded.

"Answer. My. Question!" Vader gritted out.

"We're Jabba's emissaries," the other human snapped – this one was short and round with mean little piggy eyes. "We're welcoming you to the neighborhood by informing you that all the moisture farmers pay Jabba protection in the form of a water tax."

"Jabba," Darth Vader said coldly.

"Yes," Pig Man said with a snide smile. "And unless you want your pretty little lady and those cute twins taken as slaves, you'll pay it, and you'll like it."

"Anakin," Padme said quietly. She was behind him now and he could sense she still had the twins in her arms. "Anakin, they've seen you with a lightsaber. You need to kill them."

Darth Vader did.

/

Skywalker Farm

4 hours later

"You killed them all?" Owen Lars yelped indignantly. "You're going to bring down Jabba and his goons on all of us!"

"No, we won't," Padme said briskly. "We've got the bodies loaded up in their ship. Ani will fly it out to a reasonable sand dune and crash it into the desert, cover it with sand, and the assumption is that they crashed during a local sandstorm."

"Make sure you blow up the ship, Anakin," Obi-Wan advised, "to obscure the lightsaber wounds on the bodies."

"I will," Anakin Skywalker replied. His eyes were blue now and he was sitting on a nearby couch with Luke in his arms. The baby was totally over his fright and giggled as he reached for his father's beard.

"They'll just send someone else for the tax," Owen said grimly. "This solves nothing."

"So Jabba sends his thugs around regularly to collect a water tax," Padme stated, pacing back and forth with her brow furrowed. Leia, who was in her mother's arms, was nestled against her mother's chest and seemed half asleep.

Owen rolled his eyes, "Yes, of course. That's the way it's been for generations here on Tatooine."

Padme walked over to Anakin and sat down on the couch next to her husband, "Ani, we need to kill Jabba."

Owen choked aloud and shook his head, "Are you crazy? That's impossible. He's been around for 600 years and he's got guards and layers and layers of protection. You'll just get yourself killed and us with you!"

Kenobi frowned even as he walked over to one of the front windows. He and Anakin were both scanning using the Force for potential threats, and right now there were no hostiles in range.

"Assassination is not the Jedi way," Obi-Wan pointed out.

"The Jedi way?" Padme snapped. "That giant slug sent ruffians to our home and threatened our children. And this is after Anakin and Obi-Wan saved Jabba's son Rotta from Count Dooku ..."

"Not that Jabba knows who we are," Anakin interposed.

"And you're talking about ethics?" the former queen stormed at Kenobi. "He's a tyrant and a slaver and I want him dead!"

"Wait, you actually know Jabba?" Owen demanded in an astonished tone.

The other three adults gazed at him in surprise, and then Padme nodded, "Yes, Jabba's son was kidnapped by the Separatist leader Dooku in collusion with Jabba's uncle Ziro."

Anakin picked up the story now, "My apprentice and I managed to retrieve Rotta where he was being held and we brought him back, though the Separatists tried to frame the Jedi for the kidnapping and Jabba nearly had me and my apprentice killed. Padme managed to contact Jabba with the proof that Dooku and good old Uncle Ziro were behind it all."

Owen stared at his brother-in-law with hurt in his eyes, "So you were here on Tatooine but you never came to see us ..."

Anakin looked down at Luke, and the building shook slightly.

Padme laid a gentle arm on her husband's shoulder, "Ani, just tell him. We've talked about this. Don't suppress your emotions."

Anakin looked up at Lars and shook his head slowly, his eyes glittering with pain, "I couldn't go back to the farm, Owen, until our situation was desperate after the twins were born. I couldn't go back and face the greatest failure of my life, that I didn't save my mother from the Tuskens."

Owen dropped onto a nearby chair, his weathered face incredulous, "Failed her? Failed her, Anakin? My father and other locals went out to try to rescue her and most were killed. We failed her, not you. You ... you found her, and she died in your arms, safe in your arms, Anakin. And while I know we are not blood family, I cannot tell you how we needed the closure of knowing her fate. I know none of us slept well after we lost her, worrying about her, wondering what had happened to her. At least we know she died with someone she loved."

Anakin had tears tracking down his face now and Obi-Wan looked away with discomfort and guilt. It was his fault that Anakin hadn't returned sooner to Tatooine. He truly hadn't believed that his young friend's dreams were prescient. But he had been wrong.

Padme had her free arm, the one not holding Leia, around Anakin, and for several minutes they sat in silence.

Finally, as if attune to some signal Kenobi did not hear or see or understand, Padme sat up and stared straight at her husband.

"Anakin, Owen does have a point that we can't afford to have Jabba's court or minions or extended family know that we are responsible for his death. More importantly than that, we can't have it get back to Palpatine that you and Obi-Wan are here. Jabba's death has to be subtle. An accident, perhaps?"

/

Living Room

The Lars Farm

Tatooine

3 days later

"Thank you for your help with the speeder, Anakin," Obi-Wan said with a sigh as he dropped into a chair and slurped down a long draught of blue milk.

"My pleasure," Anakin replied genially. "I like working with machines."

Obi-Wan nodded just as Padme stepped in the door with the babies in her arms. She carefully lowered both twins to the floor. The babies were sitting up now, and they gurgled with delight as Anakin used the Force to fly two shaak plushies around their heads in circles.

"Padme, it's good to see you and the twins," Kenobi said with a smile.

"My family will not be left alone without either you or me watching over them," Anakin said with a frown. "Not so long as Jabba rules Tatooine and the minions are out in force."

"The minions, as you put it, were here yesterday and drained a substantial portion of the Lars's reserves," Kenobi replied with a frown. "I hid in the refresher since I didn't want to be seen but yes, I have to agree that Jabba is a blight on this planet. It's hard enough to survive as a moisture farmer without Hutt 'taxation'."

"And that is why Jabba needs to be killed," Padme said briskly, reaching down to set Luke back on his butt. The baby had fallen over while reaching for a flying shaak.

"Admittedly someone else will take his place, but it will destabilize the Hutt power structure and that is a good thing," Anakin continued.

"Vengeance is of the Dark Side, Anakin," Kenobi said worriedly. "I fear that if you give into the Dark Side, you will be unable to contain your rage and hatred and you will either attract Palpatine's notice, or go on a rampage, or both."

His former apprentice sat up with narrowed eyes, but Padme spoke before her husband could do so.

"Kenobi, I agree with you that the Dark Side, the rage and anger, are dangerous emotions."

She turned to Anakin now and put a hand out to touch her husband's face, "They are dangerous. You are positively scary when your eyes turn yellow and you get that demented look on your face. The problem with the Jedi way is, I believe, that they shut down all powerful emotions. There are times when peace and calm are not ... not realistic, nor wise. Don't focus on vengeance, Ani. Focus on righteousness. Focus on the many people being harmed by Jabba, the farmers and their children who are dying from lack of water and resources. Channel your fear for us into loving us and the people around us. And then we kill Jabba."

Padme turned back to Obi-Wan with a frown, "You know I believe in the rule of law but the Republic has fallen and Tatooine is ruled by a slimy, sluggy despot. We will kill him because that is the right thing to do if we can."

She dropped down to the floor and gathered a fussing Leia into her arms, "We need to do it for Luke and Leia, Obi-Wan. We need to keep them safe."

/

Jabba's Throne Room

Jabba's Palace

3 weeks later

"Cha, boska!" Jabba the Hutt roared, pressing the button with his left hand.

The hapless Togruta male, who was on his knees begging for mercy, screamed as the floor opened below him and he tumbled down, down, down into the rank and horrible rancor pit.

Jabba gestured imperiously to a pair of female human slaves, who promptly began dashing around the room pursuing the hopping Klatooine paddy frogs which the idiotic Togruta had dropped on the floor on their way to Jabba's food aquarium.

The Hutt scowled furiously. Paddy frogs tasted best when unharmed and properly hydrated; it would be several hours before these frogs would be edible, assuming they survived being dropped and chased around the throne room.

At least it was amusing to watch the unfolding spectacle. The frogs, who had spent the last weeks being carefully fattened for consumption, were naturally thrilled at the opportunity to stretch their flippers. There was much screaming and shouting and dashing around by slaves, courtiers, and even a couple of bounty hunters before the five hapless amphibians were captured.

Jabba watched as his major domo Bib Fortuna ordered the frogs returned to the kitchens, and then looked down into the pit below. The Togruta was standing against a wall, wailing loudly enough that the Hutt could just hear his cries.

The wails would, no doubt, grow louder when the rancor entered the enclosure.

Jabba hit another button and he heard the giant door begin to creak upward, the door which would let the rancor enter the pit to eat its tasty tidbit.

With a wide, lipless smile, with his muddy brown eyes bright with excitement, Jabba reached into his food aquarium and grabbed a delectable gorg. (He liked paddy frogs slightly more than gorgs, but gorgs were quite tasty.)

The green amphibian squeaked as it entered Jabba's mouth, and he relished the taste on his tongue, and then he swallowed it and ...

Choked.

He choked.

Jabba tried to cough, but he couldn't. There was ... it was like there was some vise around his neck. He couldn't breathe, couldn't talk, couldn't cough.

He leaned forward in dismay and began thrashing his tail, and a moment later, to his horrified astonishment, something incredibly strong pushed him forward and he found himself falling ignominiously onto the grating in front of his throne.

Which proceeded to start breaking under his immense weight. Crack, crackle, pop, groan, bend.

Again, he tried to cry out, to cough the nasty gorg out, but he couldn't. The courtiers nearby were staring at him with shock and disbelief and panic and (yes) some pleasure and the grating snapped and crackled and suddenly Jabba the Hutt was falling, falling, smashing his tender flesh against the metal shards of the grating and he was on the floor of the rancor pit, still unable to breathe, and the rancor, the rancor!

The rancor fell on the gigantic slug like it hadn't eaten in two weeks.

Because it hadn't.

It had never, in all his life, had such a gorgeous, tasty meal.

The bewildered Togruta who had started all of the ruckus managed to creep out of the rancor pit into the adjacent holding cell, where the rancor keeper had opened the outer door and was hopping around in a stunning rendition of a Alderaanian waltz. The Togruta didn't know if the keeper was happy, or if the dance was a form of stress relief.

In any case, it seemed best to run for the dunes and he did, helped along by a mysterious auburn haired man in a cloak who guided him to a speeder, pressed some credits into his hand, and sent him on his way.

/

The Lars Farm

1 day later

"Owen, Owen!" Huff Darklighter called out, leaping from his speeder and running for the front door of the Lars home.

"Yes?"

Darklighter was panting and sweaty and astonished and happy, "You'll never believe this, Lars. Jabba the Hutt is dead!"

Owen Lars pasted on an innocent look, "Really? That's quite extraordinary!"

Author Note: I haven't said this recently – thank you so much those of you who review and favorite and follow my stories. It is tremendously encouraging to get feedback and to know that you are enjoying my writing. And Happy Father's Day to my husband in particular, and all you dads out there in general :-).