A/N: You guys are lucky I finished this yesterday and had most of it already written. I have a lot of material written, practically half of the story is finished. So read and enjoy.
It was decided that Anakin, Luke, Leia, Obi-Wan, Starkiller, and Kitster would travel back to Coruscant in Padmé's ship. The Jedi council only agreed because of Padmé's great ability to argue her opponent into a corner and even the twelve mighty Jedi masters fell to her words. Luckily for Anakin, Padmé's ship was equipped with a large medical bay big enough to fit Padmé, Obi-Wan and Kitster and more to keep Anakin company.
Refusing to ever sit still for anything in his life, Anakin settled for sitting this one moment as he held his arm close to his chest as Obi-Wan cleaned the gash and took a pair of sheers to the sleeve of his tunic, pulling the fabric off of his arm. Luke and Leia were busy piloting while Starkiller had decided to stew for some reason unknown to anyone else. Luke had assured them that he knew a trick to manipulate the hyperdrive to take them through hyperspace faster than it would normally take them and promised to fulfill it. Anakin bit back his skepticism that Luke even knew a trick like that as he silently concentrated on the Force to keep himself from wincing at any contact to the wound on his arm.
"You're lucky to still have your arm, Anakin," Obi-Wan told him.
"I need more saber practice, Dooku managed to disarm me," Anakin said pointedly.
Obi-Wan's eyes looked up at him from his concentration on Anakin's wound. "Maul disarmed me and I was older than you are now," he reminded him.
"But I'm supposed to be better," Anakin muttered.
"You are human, Anakin, and still a Padawan," Obi-Wan reminded him. "By the time you are a Master, you will be better."
"Too bad you didn't lose it, you'd have a ball with a piece of machinery attached to you," Kitster said offering his friend a playful smirk from where he stood with his arms crossed, leaned against the bulkhead and his hat tipped on his head over his eyes lazily.
For Kitster's efforts, Anakin's mouth twitched into a small smile. "It would never be perfect," he said.
Padmé shook her head as she assisted Obi-Wan in tending to Anakin. She noticed Starkiller briefly standing in the doorway, a troubled look on his face as he stared at Anakin, his eyes holding a hallow look to them before he turned away and disappeared again. "I don't think loosing a limb is something to joke about," she said softly, silently wondering what the way Starkiller looked at Anakin meant.
"Are you going to address the Senate about what happened on Geonosis?" Obi-Wan asked her.
"I have to," Padmé answered him and her eyes locked on Anakin's, seeing in his eyes his thoughts. It would be a while before they could be alone to talk about them.
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Luke and Leia flanked Obi-Wan and Anakin as they walked through the Temple towards the Healer's Ward, a Jedi Master, who they learned was Stass Allie, held a firm grasp on Anakin's injured arm, keeping it immobilized. Neither Luke or Leia would be following them if it wasn't for the fact that Stass Allie had insisted on treating them for the Sith Lighting they had suffered from Count Dooku. Obi-Wan followed, not only because of his concern for Anakin but also the Jedi Healer's insistence on treating the burns he suffered from Dooku's lightsaber and the effects of the Sith Lightning. But Anakin had the worst of it, if their father hadn't force choked Dooku, Dooku would have succeeded in taking Anakin's arm. Instead, Anakin bore a rather large and nasty gash that just barely missed bone. But neither twin said much, each disturbed with the manner in which their father had killed Dooku. Dooku could have been taken into custody, but that didn't satisfy their father. No, their father had force choked Dooku, lifting him in the air with the Force and impaled Dooku through the chest with his lightsaber. Luke and Leia weren't the only ones disturbed in that hanger. Both Anakin and Obi-Wan were as well. Their father must have felt some guilt over it, or else he wouldn't have reacted so terribly after making the kill and as soon as they arrived at the Temple, he had disappeared.
Luke and Leia's musings were interrupted once they entered the healers ward and Anakin caught something in a room that they were passing. Something that upset him.
"Mom?" Anakin said urgently and started getting distressed when he saw that she wasn't moving forcing everyone to stop. "Mom!" and when Stass Allie tried saying something and urged him forward, he struggled against her. "No! Let me go! Mom!"
"Worry about her later, Padawan Skywalker!" Stass told him sternly.
"No! That's my mother!" Anakin snapped, pulling himself away, pulling and twisting his injured arm in the process, and when he felt the wound tearing, he grit his teeth, emitting a painful cry, balking from the pain.
Obi-Wan was there instantly, grasping Anakin's shoulders, forcing the younger man to look him in the eye. "Anakin, calm down!" he ordered.
"She's not moving!" Anakin told him.
"She's alive and obviously recovering from something," Obi-Wan told him. "Right now you need to let Master Allie take care of your arm. Once she has finished, you can go in and stay with your mother for however long you need. Can you do that?" he told him reasonably.
"She needs me," Anakin told him urgently.
Obi-Wan nodded in understanding. "I understand. But think. She would want you to have that arm taken care of most of all," he reasoned.
Anakin looked in the direction of his mother, struggling with his need to be with her and what he knew that she would want him to do first before nodding. "She would expect nothing less," he said.
Leia tore her eyes away to see the disapproving look that Stass Allie threw in both Obi-Wan and Anakin's direction and remembered how emotional attachments were forbidden according to the Jedi Code. She looked back at Anakin, wondering how someone ruled by his emotions could take having to obey this rule. He couldn't. This rule only added to his resentment to the order and helped Palpatine to lure him to the dark side, she reminded herself. It pained her to know that Anakin, who cared so much about everyone around him, who would do anything for them, seeing the good person that he was, would end up turning into Darth Vader, a ruthless and cold blooded cyborg. Leia turned and met Luke's questioning eyes, beginning to see what he saw and then he gave her a look of understanding. He read her so easily, always had, and because it was him, it didn't bother her. Luke nodded to her, giving her the go ahead to do what he knew she needed to do and she did just that. But not before hearing Stass Allie tell Obi-Wan that he needed to stop indulging Anakin and for Obi-Wan to argue in Anakin's defense, telling her, very sternly, that Anakin lived outside the bounds of any normal Jedi and should be exempted from the rules at this very instance. A conversation that made Leia wonder just how much her father's fall to the dark side had affected him since he seemed to care very much for her father.
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Leia found her father, isolating himself in his room and brooding, making her pause for a minute, considering trying this conversation at a different time but such a move was out of character for her. Something that Luke understood and knew very well. She was not afraid of confrontation with moody men. She dealt with Han for quite some time and she had dealt with the other Imperial Senators during her brief time in the Senate. She was quite capable of handling this confrontation. She was her father's daughter after all. And it was that thought that made her pause again, briefly wondering when she had stopped thinking of herself as the daughter of Bail Organa and more of the daughter of Anakin Skywalker.
It was with this new thought that froze her. She had sworn to always think of herself as Bail Organa's daughter and she feared that with this new thought process that she was betraying the man who raised her, who loved her as his own, who took care of her as a child. She held herself so high just by the fact that she was the daughter of Bail and Breha Organa, but now...now wasn't the time to question herself.
It wasn't too late to turn around. Leia frowned at that thought and squared her shoulders for the upcoming confrontation and knocked on the door.
"What do you want?" Starkiller demanded opening the door and changed his hard expression when he saw Leia standing there. "Shouldn't you be at the medical bay?" he demanded.
"Shouldn't you?" Leia asked, remembering how Dooku attacked him with Sith Lightning.
"I don't need anyone to tell me how to treat the effects of Sith Lightning," Starkiller told her, stepping out of the room. "Now why are you here instead of the medical bay? I sincerely doubt that Stass Allie let you go this fast," he asked.
"I want to know why you're so upset over the results of the battle," Leia told him, taking a seat on the couch with a stubborn set to her shoulders, a gesture that she had inherited from her mother.
Starkiller took a seat opposite of her on the coffee table. "You're as stubborn as your mother about certain things," he told her.
"And you're avoiding the question," Leia told him.
"I'm not going to answer it until I've worked things out in my head," Starkiller told her as he grabbed hold of her left arm and rolled the sleeves up revealing a rather nasty burn from her wrist to her elbow she received from when that pipe rolled over her, the movement of fabric against it making her wince. "This is a second degree burn, you need to have it treated," he told her.
"I don't see why you're upset, a war was prevented and Dooku is dead," Leia told him.
"Dooku was supposed to die three years from now, this is a grave disruptance to the timeline," Starkiller told her.
"Why is that?" Leia asked.
"Because about a month after I defeat Dooku and kill him on the Invisible Hand over Coruscant, I take his place as Palpation's new apprentice," Starkiller told her.
Leia finally understood. "How do we stop it?" she asked.
"We find a way to drive a wedge between myself and Palpatine and we're going to need incriminating evidence against him," Starkiller told her. "And just saying that Palpatine is corrupt and an evil parasite isn't going to do anything to help us," he told her.
"If I hear about how gracious and benevolent Palpatine is, I cannot promise you that I will not say anything to counter that," Leia told him and caught the smile that he tried to hide.
"Your sharp tongue must have frustrated Organa to no end," he commented.
Leia didn't confirm or counter his assessment. "But you find it amusing," she stated.
"It has always been amusing and intriguing to me," Starkiller told her.
Leia eyed him. "Why?" she asked.
Starkiller let go of her arm and stood, walking towards a cabinet from which he pulled a first aid kit before returning and opening it. "A healer would never admit to this due to his preference to creams, but bacta does wonders on burns," he told her, unscrewing a jar of bacta.
"You're avoiding the question," Leia told him, getting an unfamiliar feeling from him as well as his reluctance to admit to it.
"Your mother can argue her point eloquently, tactfully, and never upset someone by saying the wrong thing. She knew how to appeal to one's sensibilities and somehow sensed what words would upset her opponent and always avoided saying it. That is where we're different. When I knew without a doubt that I was right and my opponent was wrong, I not only backed my arguments up with logic but I was insistent in making my opponent feel like an idiot while doing it. And if someone was right and I didn't want to admit to it, I denied it," he told her. "You get your sharp tongue from me, in fact it is eerily close to mine. Organa may have been able to hide your birth and adoption records, but anyone who knew both myself and you your mother personally would be able to tell that you were ours," he told her.
"So you've always known?" Leia asked, not knowing how to deal with that if it were true.
"I didn't put two and two together until the battle over Endor," Starkiller told her, "When I saw in Luke's mind how he felt towards you," he said honestly as he rubbed some bacta on the burn on her arm.
"But you just said..."
"Willful ignorance. I didn't want to even consider the possibility because if I did then my very existence at the time would be based on the cruelest lie," he told her.
"What kind of lie?" Leia asked.
Starkiller looked up at her, about to answer her when he saw blood oozing down the side of her face. "You're bleeding," he said concerned, reaching over to find where the blood was coming from, finding a gash at the crown on her head.
"I am?" Leia asked confused.
This only gave him even more concern. "You don't feel that?" he asked.
"I just have this massive migraine and I feel a little lightheaded, but that could be due to my lack of sleep and...now the room is spinning," Leia told him just before she slumped over.
"Leia!" Starkiller called alarmed, catching her before she fell over. He pulled her slumped form over to him where her head just rolled over his arm. He patted the side of her face in an attempt to bring her back to awareness. "Leia, open your eyes!" he said, getting scared when the last of consciousness left her. He gathered her small frame into his arms and stood up, leaving the quarters to rush her back to the medical bay, cursing her for not staying there in the first place.
Upon his arrival there, he only found one free healer and quickly strode over to her. "She needs attention fast, Bant!" he told the Mon Calamarian healer, in his worry forgetting that he wasn't supposed to show any familiarity with anyone.
Bant turned around, quite surprised to see him standing behind her with Leia in his arms. Not questioning him, she turned her attention on Leia, "Set her down," she instructed.
"She has a gash at the crown of her head. She most likely received that on Geonosis. She seemed fine up until she collapsed," Starkiller told her worriedly.
Bant did a cursory examination of Leia's head. "There's a rivet stuck in her scalp and it looks deep," she told him. "I'm going to have to take her into surgery right away, I'll let you know when I'm done," she finished.
"You are going to have fight me if you think that I'm leaving," Starkiller told her determinedly.
Bant looked at the serious expression on his face. "Very well, but you're going to have to assist me," she conceded before noticing the bacta that had been rubbed over a second degree burn but didn't say anything to that.
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Starkiller remained vigilant by Leia's side and three hours after surgery she had yet to open her eyes. There wasn't much they could do until she woke up. There was no way of determining just what damage, if any, had been done to her brain by the rivet until she was awake.
Taking a seat next the bed that Leia was resting on, he took her hand in one of his and used his other hand to brush a strand of hair away from her face. He cursed himself for not seeing this coming. He should have left her to assist Master Yoda instead of letting her tag along to apprehend Dooku. She was in no way ready to face a Sith. He knew better than that.
"You're blaming yourself, again. No matter how many times people tell you not to do that, you have yet to listen to a word anyone has to say. Why is that, Anakin?" Bant's voice asked, startling Starkiller who turned to look at her in shock.
"You know who I am?" he asked in shock.
"I saw your arrival through the force during my meditation, that and Qui-Gon visited me and spoke to me about what I saw," Bant explained.
Starkiller chose to ignore the comment about Qui-Gon and turned back towards Leia. "You can't tell anyone about what you know, Bant,"
"I don't intend to as there really isn't anyone who would believe me. Does Obi-Wan know?" she asked.
"No, and don't even think about telling him," Starkiller answered.
"I would have thought that you would have told him seeing as how you seem to enjoy torturing him. He's had nightmares about having two Anakin Skywalkers running around him," Bant told him.
That betrayal of confidence put a momentary smile on Starkiller's face. "He has?" he asked, the very idea becoming very intriguing.
"You don't seem to have changed a bit," Bant said shaking her head. "You care a great deal for her," she said, looking at Leia.
"Just how long do I have to wait for her to wake up?" Starkiller asked, ignoring the comment.
"Head injuries are tricky, Anakin, it's hard to tell. It may take days, months or years," Bant told him. "I don't think that I need to tell you how serious head injuries are. You saw how deeply imbetted that rivet was into her head."
Starkiller nodded his understanding. "Do me a favor, send someone to fetch her brother, he's using the name Luke Lars," he requested.
"I'll see what I can do. You should try talking to her, it helps," Bant told him as she left.
Once she was gone, he focused once more on Leia, clasping both hands around her smaller hand, lifting it to his lips and kissing her knuckles. "Leia," he whispered her name softly. "Your name alone should have been enough to open my eyes the moment that I was first in your presence. Do you even remember that day? I remember that day. I had closed my heart the day that I faced your mother's funeral, she still looked pregnant even then. I had no reason to believe that there was a chance that you had survived where she had not. But when I saw you, learned of your name, and heard you speak, I refused to even consider the possibility that my heart was trying to tell me. Being in the same room as you was too painful for me. I was willing to do anything to rid myself of that pain and I know that you could never understand that or forgive me for what I've done to you," he began and took a deep breath. "The moment that I learned that I was going to be a father, I had this image in my head of what you would be, I even named you after the sister I failed to protect. When I believed you were gone, it left this hole inside me. Dreams of you haunted me every night. I already lost you once, Princess, don't make me loose you again, so you need to open your eyes."
"Is she alright?" Luke's alarmed voice asked from the doorway.
"I'm not sure," Starkiller answered worriedly. "What did Bant tell you?" he asked looking at him.
"Bant?" Luke asked confused.
"Red Mon Calamarian," Starkiller gave his son the hint.
"Oh, her," Luke said nodding. "She told me about the rivet," he said walking over to his sister. "She was fine not too long ago," he said disbelievingly.
"Head injuries are tricky. In some situations, a person could have had nails embedded in their brains and never even feel it and they will go undetected for years," Starkiller explained. "We removed the rivet without causing further injury, but now we have to wait until she wakes up to know the full extent," he told him.
"She'll be fine," Luke told him with confidence.
"Can you sense that through your bond?" Starkiller asked.
"It's too foggy, but I don't think that she is in much danger," Luke told him, taking a seat in a different chair.
Starkiller nodded in understanding. "How are you doing?" he asked.
"Better than I felt over Endor," Luke answered.
Starkiller nodded. "Good."
"I think that one of those battle droids got Leia in the back back in the arena," Luke told him.
"You think?" Starkiller rose an eyebrow.
"Well she did fall down once and cried out before she got back up and went after a specific droid," Luke told him.
"We'll see about that then," Starkiller told him, turning Leia on her side so that he could take a look at her back to treat that wound and let out an exasperated sigh at the sight of a tattoo on her lower back before finding the mark left by a blaster just below her left shoulder blade. "Hand me that bacta," he said, holding out his hand for the jar which was promptly handed over. "The blaster fire just grazed her, a couple bacta treatments will take care of it," he said, applying some bacta to the mark before laying her back down.
"You're really worried about her, aren't you?" Luke asked, looking at him.
"Are you asking me that out of general concern for my state of mind or are you hoping to be the voice of assurance to mask your fear of losing her?" Starkiller asked.
"I..." Luke wasn't sure how to answer that. "We've only known that we were related a couple days before Endor," he said, hoping that it was all that he had to say.
"I know," Starkiller assured him taking a seat. "I imagine that it was very disruptive for you both to be separated," he said.
Luke nodded. "I used to watch the suns set out on the farm trying to figure out why I felt incomplete. There were nights when I watched the stars that I felt something out there, someone across the stars who was feeling the same thing. I tried to talk to Uncle Owen about it but he didn't want to listen and insisted that it was all in my head. Aunt Beru was different though, she promised me that I would understand someday," he said, looking out the nearby window to watch the repulser traffic.
"My mother used to do the same thing from time to time," Starkiller told him. "She was a twin as well and when she thought that I was in bed asleep, she would stand outside searching the stars for my uncle. I asked her about it once when I was eight, she just told me that the stars connected them together and that one day the stars will align themselves and that would be the day when her missing half would return to her."
"But they didn't," Luke said, knowing the sad story.
"I'm not the only one who felt her death. When your twin dies, it has a physical and psychic affect on you. I remember being deathly ill for weeks when mine died," Starkiller told him. "You shouldn't worry about feeling like that. If Leia doesn't regain consciousness within the next two days on her own, there are drugs that can be administrated to ensure that she does."
Luke nodded, trusting him on that. "So this twin thing is a strong gene?" he asked instead.
"On my mother's homeworld, it is extremely rare to not be born with a twin. We're also long lived, a ripe old age there is close to two hundred standard years, or so I've been told," Starkiller told him offhandedly.
"Compared to Master Yoda, thats young," Luke quipped.
"Master Yoda is an unknown, I still don't know what species he hails from," Starkiller told him seriously.
Luke smiled in spite of his mood. "Any other things that makes us different?" he asked.
Starkiller rubbed his face with his hand. If anyone had told him five years ago that he would be having a discussion of roots with his son, he would have killed whoever dared to say something of the likes without a second's thought. He glanced over at Luke, wondering how he could be so positive about everything, how he could try to look at the good side of things and insist on remaining on positive subjects even in the face of destruction and tragedy. He reasoned that Luke received all the best qualities that his mother possessed. "Are you hungry?" he asked.
Luke looked at him, sensing his father's reluctance to continue down the current topic which was a little confusing, but he chose not to press the issue. "Yeah, sure," he answered.
Starkiller stood up then, suddenly eager to leave the room. "I'll just see whats being stored in the kitchen," he said, leaving the room.
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Obi-Wan rubbed his beard with his hand after his conversation with Bant. Hearing about the serious injury that Leia was suffering from bothered him greatly. He couldn't explain it, but he felt some sort of bond with the girl, like he knew her. But it was more than that, she reminded him too much of his Padawan, albeit, a bit more level-headed, but the likeliness was there. Obi-Wan knew, also, of the bond that Anakin was denying between him and Leia, which is why he was coming to find Anakin, finding him where he knew he'd be.
Anakin sat at his mother's bedside waiting for her to wake up. "How is she?" Obi-Wan asked.
"Master Allie explained that she's in a healing trance and shouldn't wake up for a few days," Anakin told him.
"Then shouldn't you be resting in your own bed?" Obi-Wan asked.
"I want to be here when she wakes," Anakin told him simply and then looked at him. "Why are you here, Master?" he asked. "Does the Council require something?"
"I just had a conversation with Bant," Obi-Wan told him.
"And?" Anakin asked.
"She just had to preform surgery on Leia," Obi-Wan told him. "Anakin, when Dooku threw that exhaust pipe towards her, a rivet pressed itself into her head, Bant had to remove it," he informed him.
"Is she alright?" Anakin asked, unable to hide his concern.
"There is a fifty/fifty percent chance that she will wake up and even then, there is no telling what damage was done to her brain from the injury," Obi-Wan told him.
Anakin looked troubled at that piece of information. "She'll wake up," he said.
Obi-Wan looked at him. "How can you be sure?" he asked.
"It's a matter of sheer force of will, she has that," Anakin observed.
Obi-Wan offered a brief smile. "So do you, Padawan," he reminded him.
There were a few times when Anakin minded being called Padawan, but this wasn't one of them. "If you say so," he said. He turned back to his mother. "I don't know what would happen if I lost her," he said.
Emotional attachments were forbidden, Obi-Wan knew that. But Anakin formed them before he came to the temple and he fared well with them, he did his duty without question despite that breech to the code. That was why Obi-Wan dismissed the attachments his padawan had formed before becoming a jedi. "I am sure that she will come out of this just fine," he said. "You're tired, you should get some sleep." It wasn't a command, it was a suggestion.
"But..."
"She won't wake up for a few days, you know that. There is no use in depriving yourself of the rest you need any longer," Obi-Wan told him.
"Yes Master," Anakin said, slowly standing and allowed his master to escort him to his own bed.