I do not own Star Wars.

Ch. 14: Some Things Always Return

"I hate waiting," Anakin groused, well aware that his complaint was not in keeping with the proper conduct of a Jedi Master. Proper conduct be blasted. I am just not meant to be patient. I've tried to learn it, but it's not coming.

Obi-Wan did not look up from behind his datapad. "There is no try," he said blandly in response to Anakin's testy irritation.

Anakin paced Obi-Wan's hexagonal Council member bedroom, past the desk and the sleeping pallet and the two meditation pads. Obi-Wan perched on one, engrossed in his latest venture into historical nonfiction. "You're just not old enough for that sort of esoteric wisdom to sound convincing, Master," Anakin snapped.

Obi-Wan did him the favor of placing the datapad on his lap and regarding him directly. "What personal store do you have in this exactly?" Anakin threw up his hands. "You ask that! You ask what personal store I have in finding the rest of Kad's family! I love you, Master, but I swear you can turn yourself to stone with the blink of an eye."

Obi-Wan's expression cooled. "You've accused me of that before, yes."

Anakin was immediately ashamed. Here I am acting like we're back in the Clone Wars. Is this pre- or post-Sith, anyway? Didn't I learn to listen to him, trust his judgment before my own, and above all, never say anything to him that I might regret later? And I call Mara insensitive. Idiot, idiot, idiot!

Mentally chided, he sank onto one of the other pads. "I'm sorry. I'm worried. You know I invest in people too quickly and too deeply." He made himself meet his former Master's eyes.

Obi-Wan put a hand on his shoulder. "You feel their pain, Anakin. You identify with it, you want to end it. That's nothing to be ashamed of. Your fatal flaw has always been your conviction that if you're good enough, you can save everyone. I know you learned that's not so eleven years ago, but a part of you still thinks it's true. Let go, Anakin. You're not omnipotent."

A sour taste filled Anakin's mouth. Padme once said something similar to him. He smiled wryly at Obi-Wan, but the expression twisted until it was almost a grimace. "I do let go, Master. Every day."

Obi-Wan opened his mouth to say more when the door slid open. Mace Windu, in all his focused intensity, stood behind it. "Zey located Jusik. He's in the Senate district."

They stared at him with undisguised skepticism. "Is this Jedi-turned-Mando posing as a Senate aide?" Anakin asked.

Windu frowned at him. "I don't know the details. All I know is that this is Council business. Obi-Wan, come with me. Anakin, stay here and tell Clan Skirata once we comm you."

Anakin jumped up as Obi-Wan followed Windu out the door and to the lift. "And why is this a Council matter?" he called after them, unhappy at being left out again but too conscious that Windu barely tolerated his existence to voice that fact.

"They were arrested on Sidious's orders. Any suffering they have endured is another atrocity we failed to prevent," Windu answered with a voice as cold as the night air of Tatooine. "We Jedi are servants of the Force. The Force is life. Therefore we serve all life, including Mandalorians." He gave Anakin a piercing glare. Someone had still not forgiven him for his near fall. "Jedi stand as shields before the dark so others won't have to. And we, the servants of life and light, fell for the dark's charisma just as quickly as anyone else. We served the living incarnation of the dark for three years. We were blind and foolish. Helping the dark in the name of the light." The deep disgust in Windu's voice shocked Anakin. He was not the only one Mace Windu had not forgiven. The senior Master turned on his heel and entered the lift. "We failed these beings once. We will not do so again. Await our comm."

Anakin passed the time performing a rigorous meditation-in-motion sequence that left his breathing ragged and his mind blank and clear. He sprang out of his backbend into a handstand on his fingertips. Serenity. Serenity. Give me serenity, he begged the Force. I've given up everything for you. It's the least you can do.

The comm beeped from the pile of his over-robe, belt, and boots. Anakin catapulted the distance, called the thing into his palm, and barked, "Skywalker here."

"We've found them, Anakin," Obi-Wan reported breathlessly.

Anakin sat down abruptly. "Where?"

"In a warren of storerooms below the Senate building. Apparently Sidious kept some inconvenient objects out of the way down here. No holocrons or other dark artifacts that we've found, but…"

"Master, the Skiratas?" he pressed gently.

"All the clones and the former Jedi are here in stasis pods. Their life signs are so slow they're barely detectable. It's no wonder Zey had trouble sensing them. Go tell Kal. We're bringing them back now. They'll be there in no more than twenty minutes. And remember Master Che's orders about them, Anakin. No unplanned physical strain." Obi-Wan sounded pained. "Try to keep them where they are."

Anakin ran to Kal's cell but hesitated outside it. A sudden disturbance was likely to send the poor man into another panic attack. He knocked gently but firmly.

"Come in," the older man's weary voice called.

Anakin stepped inside but made sure the door closed behind him. He did not think the healers would appreciate the disruption this was sure to cause.

Kal nodded welcome. He was stretched out on his bed, the blanket pulled up to his waist but no farther. The window stood wide open, as it always did in each of the escapees' rooms, even at night.

"They found them," Anakin reported. "They're all in stasis, and they're bringing them to the Temple for controlled release."

Kal was already up and perched on the edge of his bed, grabbing for his shoes. The door opened behind Anakin before he could deliver the bad news.

"You," Master Caudle said grimly, "aren't going anywhere." He crossed his arms and stood legs shoulder width apart, prepared to weather the ensuing juggernaut.

Kal looked up, enraged need flashing across his face at such a seemingly heartless denial of his paternal duty and rights. "Those are my sons-"

"Who will be here within fifteen minutes, still in stasis and in no way conscious. Feel free to wait in the hangar for the pods, if you want. Face it, Mister Skirata. Your presence won't do them any good. In your fragile state, you're likely to hurt yourself, and where will they be then?"

Kal glowered at him, but his mellowed common sense took over again. He crossed his arms in reluctant resignation. "Fine. I get to see them as soon as they arrive?"

Caudle had the sense to negotiate. "You can see the pods and, after necessary medical checks and, in the case of the clones, administration of the anti-aging treatment, be present when each of them is awakened."

He nodded shortly, thus accepting the deal.

Master Caudle shot Anakin a bland look. "I'll inform you once they're five minutes away." He left.

Kal continued tugging his boots on, muttering in Mando'a. "I know he's right. I'm not going to be any use right now, but fierfek, those are my sons!" He felt tempted to throw his boot across the room, but instead got it on with a decisive yank.

A type of kinship he rarely felt with Jedi loosened Anakin's tongue. "I know," he said with a sigh as he stared at his boots. "It doesn't seem fair sometimes. That parents can't make everything all right just by being there." Kal looked at him. The look was measuring, careful, and surprisingly compassionate. "They're yours, aren't they? Luke and Leia Amidala are your kids."

Anakin stood as still as if he had been turned to stone. Strangely, he felt no jolt of alarm, just a release of tightness somewhere under his breastbone, like a fist clenched hard to ward off pain had relaxed as a spasm passed. So someone finally noticed, someone finally asked, someone would finally know. "Yes," he answered in a flat whisper, and the word shot through him like the hottest blaster bolt. The rest poured of his mouth in an eager rush. "Yes, they're my children. They're my son and daughter. I'm their father." Such sweet words that he wanted to repeat over and over, to shout to the planet and the galaxy…released just this once, where only one person could hear them. He slid to the ground, back to the door, hugged his knees, and stared up at the other being. A Mandalorian he barely knew was to be his judge, jury, and exonerator, it seemed.

Kal smiled sadly at him. "Figured. They look like you."

Anakin was about to deny it. No one at the Temple had ever guessed. Only Yoda, Mace Windu, Obi-Wan, Ferris, and Veenna knew. Then again, when he thought about it, Jedi, observant though they were, were strangers to the intricacies of family resemblance. A casual observer wouldn't see that Luke's eyes matched Anakin's and make the mental leap required to connect them genetically. Kal had spent eight years on Kamino, and three more years surrounded by clones on Coruscant. Without Force perception to make the going easier, he must have mastered recognizing subtle differences in appearance and behavior. That expertise translated into picking up on subtle similarities, as well, such as the shade of Luke's eyes in certain lights, or the way Leia's hair curled at the ends when it was wet, both similarities Anakin had noticed and treasured.

Kad's grandfather waited patiently for the Jedi to share if he felt like it. And he did feel like it. He'd never been able to talk about this with anyone, not once in eleven years. "You can't tell anyone," he said. "They don't know, and they can never find out."

Kal saddened. "Must be hard."

"I was young, and probably stupid," Anakin said. It felt like a confession. "I fell in love, and she did too, and it all worked for a few years, keeping it quiet, then-"

Kal nodded. Well, he had experience with secret Jedi liaisons. "Senator Amidala?"

A pang burned through Anakin. Padme. "Yeah."

"What happened?"

Anakin teetered on the edge of laying out the whole truth for him: his confused swamp of feelings as he neared a fall to the dark side, the whisper of the Force in a youngling's ear that alerted the Council to their impending doom-"Master Windu, did you know that we're all going to die?"-his horrified confession of his marriage to Mace Windu as the other pulled his lightsaber on him, Obi-Wan's anguish, the battle in the Chancellor's office, killing the man he had thought was his friend, afterward. A sense of discretion stopped him. Kal had enough problems without Anakin heaping old burdens on him. Anyway, there was some truth to Obi-Wan's assertion that there were some things non-Force-sensitives just couldn't understand.

"It…came up, and the Council gave me a choice. We already knew we would give them to the Jedi-the best thing for them, being Force-sensitive. So I…" He trailed off.

Kal looked away. "Her or them, I guess."

The thought ached, but it had the ring of truth. "I miss her every day," he admitted, and unbidden tears spilled from his eyes. "But they make it worth it-most days."

Kal looked back at him from studying the pincer-shaped formation of thrantcills flying outside the window. "I understand leaving your wife for the sake of your kids. The other part, not letting them know- Can't say the same. Don't you miss being their father?"

"Yes," Anakin said wretchedly, scrubbing at his eyes. "But-" He looked up, and even though Kal looked nothing like Kad, there was something, the look in the eyes maybe, that was just similar enough to send a spike of reminder through him. He clung to it, grateful and relieved. "But if I hadn't stayed, I wouldn't know any of them at all. Kad, Luke, Leia, Mara…." He shrugged and felt a genuine smile on his face, though admittedly it was a bit watery. "I'm glad I did. And whatever they need me to be, I'll be. Now they need a brother and a mentor. I can be that. Someday they'll need a friend. I can be that too."

Kal nodded, not smiling, but Anakin sensed something bordering on approval.

Now that he had honest approval of his actions, not Obi-Wan's empathy or Yoda's understanding or either of his mentors' forgiveness, but honest-to-Force approval, he found he didn't really need it anymore. He didn't need another to exonerate him for his past, mistakes or no. True acceptance came from within. That Jedi truism aside, Kal's approval was appreciated.

He stood, feeling as fresh as a drought-stricken land after a new rain, and held out a hand. "Come on. Let's go meet your sons."

Breath returned first. His lungs expanded as they drew in a deep, wheezing gasp of air. He gasped like a drowning man pulled from the water. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. A deep, regular tempo beat in his head, the veins in his wrists, his chest. A heartbeat. Someone's heart was beating. My heart. The thought crawled sluggishly to the surface of his muddled awareness. He lay still as he listened to its measured count. I am alive. He turned the words over. They were right. He was alive. The thought filled him with pleasure for some reason he didn't quite remember. Ah, well. It would come to him.

Who am I? He answered his own question with military precision. N-11 Ordo Skirata, Null-class. Captain of the Grand Army of the Republic. Son of Kal Skirata. Husband of Besany Wennen. Now that was an answer Buir would be proud of: complete and succinct, no timed wasted and no area left untended. He ran himself through diagnostics of mental functions. He tested his memory for faces, names, numbers, coordinates, basic facts. His eidetic memory produced the information readily.

That complete, he focused for the first time on the obvious issue. I've been out of it for a bit. A trickle of unease leaked through his surface calm. What happened?

Ordo forced his eyes open. Bright light blinded him.

An oval silhouette hovered over him, black as deep space. "Son? Ord'ika?"

It was Kal. Ordo smiled fuzzily. "Buir. I knew you'd come." At his words, the memories came surging back. Ordo shot upright, only to be smacked by a wave of dizziness. The world spun, a bright miasma of color. He clutched the sides of the stasis pod. "They caught us, Buir. The hut'uune kriffing caught us."

Kal's strained chuckle came from somewhere to his right. "Well, you can't win every battle, son."

Ordo reached out a hand and felt for his father. Two hands caught his and clenched it hard. "They put us in stasis," Ordo growled. "They put us in stasis."

"To keep you out of the way, I guess, son. You and your brothers and Bard'ika in jail were more than they could handle, the bastards."

"Cowards," Ordo spat out vehemently. He tried to clamber out of the pod, but Kal caught his shoulder.

"Son, just stay put for now, okay? You're a little weak. It will take a few minutes for your strength to come back."

Ordo blinked his bleary eyes. Kal was still a blurry outline. "Where is everyone, Buir?"

"We're all here, son. It's okay."

Reluctantly the Null lay back in the pod and willed his body to recover. He relived the last horrific hours in his memory: the jump to awareness at the sounds of an attack, the capture, loaded into a speeder bus in a state of half-consciousness, his father and three others singled out and taken elsewhere. He had been sure they would be lined up against a building in some alleyway and shot execution-style, or maybe even be tortured for information they didn't have.

Worst of all was when they marched him through dark tunnels he knew were underground to a room with a row of stasis pods that waited, sterile and gleaming, evil maws open to swallow him and his brothers alive. He fought and they smashed the butt of a blaster on the back of his head for it. Stunned, he still writhed as they forced him into a pod and connected him to a swarm of tubes and wires. As the drugs began to shut down his system, the lid closed with a snap, trapping him in a coffin of airless darkness while his father and wife were tortured and murdered. A tube down his throat choked off his horrified shriek of denial, and then the looming blackness seized him. His worst nightmare, come true.

But it was over. Kal had rescued them, as he always did. How could I ever doubt that a man like Kal'buir would defeat the aruetiise and come back for us? He had never doubted it, not really. Kal Skirata was everything Ordo could ever want to be: bold, compassionate, inventive, decisive, caring, a natural leader. The perfect Mando. The perfect father. Ordo knew that he deified his father in his thoughts into the wrath of Mandalore incarnate. He didn't care. The assessment was one hundred percent accurate. Time and time again Kal had proven this. This little incident was merely one more to add to the list.

Ordo felt his functions return to normal. He stretched his brawny arms high in the air. His stomach rumbled in monstrous hunger. "I'm starved, Buir." He peered around. The room began to resolve itself into a small chamber with pink walls and a rectangular window, open, through which he could hear the blares of traffic. Kal sharpened into a short, wiry figure dressed in loose white garments. His hand rested on Ordo's shoulder. The Null tweaked the sleeve of the white shirt. "Did you break out of prison in your nightgown, Buir?" he teased.

His father laughed lightly, but Ordo heard a bleak, rancid undertone. He went cold. "Shab, I missed you, Ord'ika," Kal croaked tearfully.

Ordo struggled to a sitting position. Frigid dread constricted his stomach. "How long's it been, Buir?" Kal hesitated. "How long, Buir?" Ordo blinked the last haziness from his eyes. He stared at his father, mouth open. A worn old man looked back at him. "Eleven years, son," he said with a sad smile. Where once Kal had possessed a small but fit body, now he was thin and frail. His washed out skin and haunted eyes like spectral blue lights gave him the appearance of a small, sad ghost about to fade away, even though he was wreathed in noonday sunlight.

Ordo caught his father's hand on his shoulder and felt the weak, gnarled fingers. How hard he must have squeezed Ordo's hand to impart the illusion of vigor and health, just so his son would have a few happy moments. "Oh…oh, Buir," Ordo moaned. Hot tears burned his eyes. Eleven years!

His fingers clenched the sides of the pod. He hated this metal coffin. It had stolen a decade from his family. He wanted to rip it to pieces, smash it against the wall until it shattered, make it hurt. But it was only a machine. "I want out." He braced his hands against the side and dropped his feet over the edge. When he left go, his feet landed, but his legs crumpled. He fell to his knees. "Buir," he rasped desperately.

Kal knelt beside him-so insubstantial. His mighty father, diminished. Ordo flung his arms around him and wept in utter despair. Kal stroked his hair and murmured in his ear. For an eternity they held one another on the floor, now silent.

At last Ordo drew a shuddering breath and sat back. Keeping his hand on Kal's arm-no way was he ever letting go now-he took stock of his surroundings. A raised platform that bore a pallet and blanket sat against the far wall. A set of loose white clothes were folded neatly at the foot of the improvised bed, while a pair of slipper-like shoes sat on the floor nearby. His size, he saw. He looked down at the rubbery black bodysuit they had cinched him in as they prepared him for the stasis pod. He stood, ripped off the cursed garment, and roughly dressed in the white clothes. "Where are we, Buir?" he asked, tone clipped as he fought back another wave of despair. He had to take care of his father now, whatever happened.

Kal eased himself to a standing position. "The Jedi Temple, son. It's a long story."

Jedi. The esoteric Temple recluses currently occupied a very low position on Ordo's list of things of importance in the galaxy. Kal numbered one at the moment, his brothers and Besany tied for second. As he pulled the light shirt over his head, his fingers found a clump in his shorn hair. He pulled his hand away to see fingers stained a suspicious rusty color. Caked blood clotted his hair from when one of the black ops whipped him with the butt of his blaster. A bitter laugh tore itself from his throat. He still bled from a decade-old wound while Kal…

He whirled to see his father leaning against the wall. "Are you hurt, Ord'ika?" The worry in his voice blew Ordo away. Kal was putting him first even now?

"I'm fine, Buir. What happened, why are we here? Are we really all here?"

Kal pulled him over to the bed and made him sit. "I'll be honest with you, Ordo. It's not good."

Ordo straightened his body like the soldier he was. "I can take it, Buir. Pull no punches."

"Have I ever?" Kal joked with a gleam in his eye.

Heartened by the humor, Ordo shook his head.

Kal said, "Good news first. You all received the anti-aging treatment while you were still in stasis. You'll age normally from now on. The war is over. The Jedi made sure that all the clones got aging treatment, citizenship, and veterans' benefits. Fi was on Mandalore the whole time. He has a daughter, and he's here now. We're all alive, and Besany is expected to make a full recovery from the conditions of the prison we were in. Mird has a baby, and it's here. Kad'ika is here. We're all together again, Ordo. That's what's important."

Ordo closed his eyes. "Tell me the rest." He kept his eyes closed as Kal related everything else. Wave after terrible wave battered him, left him breathless with loss. His father and wife locked in tiny cells for eleven years, Mird abandoned and alone in the Lower Levels, Kad'ika brainwashed into being a Jedi. He opened his eyes and stared at his father. "What are we going to do?" he pleaded, sounding like the child he had once been.

Kal wrapped him in a hug. "We'll go home, son. Once the Jedi feel we're well enough, we'll go home."

"Jedi," Ordo growled. The redness of hellfire flickered at the edge of his vision, Mando madness enticing him with its promise of quick vengeance and a furious release of the pain.

Leave under the Jedi's direction? He wanted to hunt down every last one of them and leave the Temple littered with broken corpses, its fine marble floors smeared with blood. They had taken everything from his family, enslaved them, captured them, violated them in the greatest possible way by indoctrinating Kad'ika until he was one of them, and now they had the audacity to step in and play the heroes? He sprang to his feet.

Kal stood and caught his arm. "Ordo, listen to me-" he began, when a disturbance in the hall caused them to pause. Ordo heard a familiar voice shouting. He rushed to the door and slid it open.

A blond male Jedi staggered away from an open door across the hall, a hand clutching his nose as blood welled between his fingers.

Mereel advanced on him, screaming in animal rage. "Where is he? Where's Kad'ika?" he bellowed. The shadow of madness contorted his face. His eyes looked almost crimson. Mereel grabbed the unresisting Jedi by the front of his tunic and shook violently, bashing the man's head against the wall. "Where is he?"

"Check!" Kal shouted.

Ordo and Mereel went rigid with an instinct cemented in them by years of careful training. The Jedi Mereel had attacked stumbled away from him, eyes wide as one hand grasped his lightsaber at his belt.

Mereel turned slowly until his gaze fell on Kal. The vicious fire in his eyes died away. "Buir, they stole Kad'ika," he groaned as he crossed the hall to fold his father in a gentle but desperate hug. "He won't tell me where the shab he is."

"Mereel Skirata, you will not attack anyone in this building again unless I specifically order you to," Kal commanded sternly. "That man is Kad's friend."

"Friend?" Mereel shrilled. He whirled to glare at the Jedi, who stood his ground. Past the stream of blood from the nose and the back of his head, Ordo recognized the man as General Skywalker, who looked not a day older than the last time he had seen him glorified on the holonews. Resentment boiled in Ordo's stomach. The sanctimonious mystics got to live forever, while his buir died slowly of old age.

Kal floored him by giving the Jedi a friendly nod. "Su'cuy, Anakin." Skywalker laughed a little unsteadily and gingerly felt his head. "'So you're still alive.' Oddly appropriate."

"You might want to go. I have to give the kids a short lesson on manners."

"I'll do that." He backed away, attention on Mereel and Ordo, around the corner.

"Lucky we're in the Healing Halls," Kal muttered. Then he glared at Mereel. "Did you hear me? You will not attack any Jedi again."

"I will," Mereel vowed tearfully. "I'll murder every last one of them. You didn't hear Kad scream, Buir. I want to hear them scream!"

Kal crossed his arms. "The Jedi are the only family Kad'ika's ever known, Mer'ika. He loves them. You are not going to hurt him any worse than he's already been hurt by turning on them. That man helped raise him with love and affection as rich as any Mando's. And how do you thank him? With a broken nose and a concussion. That's not going to fly, son. In my book, attempted murder does not equal gratitude."

"But-"

Kal jabbed a finger in Mereel's chest. "No. Buts."

Ordo's brother slumped. "Yes, sir." Then his head came up with a jerk. "But I will kill the one who stole him," he snarled brutally.

Ordo wanted in on the action. They both had perfect recall and so could identify the man easily. With their four Null brothers in tow, it would be a simple matter to swarm the man who had destroyed Kad's life and rip him apart.

But Kal straightened to his full height-which didn't even bring him level with their chins-and trapped both of them with his Father Stare. "Sons, I owe that man my life. It's because of his orders that none of us were killed." He smiled faintly as if reading their minds. "You will not slice him up into deli-sized portions."

Ordo moaned. "No, Buir, don't say it like that! We'll never be able to touch him."

Kal took a step forward. "Saved my life," he enunciated clearly.

Ordo clenched his fists, tempted to disobey his father for once and rampage these peaceful halls until the monster lay dead at his feet. "Ord'ika." Just a statement, no emphasis or pressure.

His hands relaxed as he once more bowed to Kal's wishes. What more could he do?

"Thanks, son."

Ordo whimpered and dragged both Kal and Mereel into a hug. "Ad'ike, we're together again," his father's voice counseled. "That's what's important. Now let's go see your brothers."

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