My father was the scourge of the galaxy… Yet, I was named for the Jedi Master who preceded him: a man tormented between the bonds of his honour and his love, his oath and his passion. I am my father's son through and through. A question crossed my mind; I wondered if he would have loved me if he knew that I existed. A smile crept in the corner of my mouth. Yes, he would have.

Running my finger over the last line, I made myself swear that I would never forget her story for as long as there was breath still in me. A tear fell onto her spidery signature, threatening to blot it out.

At the back of the holo-journals was a link to a letter. Knowing what it would lead to, I touched it with the shaky tip of my finger. The letter was brief, asking how my mother was. I followed the letter's trail to Naboo, to the lake country. One day, I promised myself, I would visit it. I would meet my father face to face.

My hyperdrive computer beeped at me; we were now approaching the outer stratosphere of Coruscant. Jadis stirred at the noise, causing Jacen to wake.

"We're home, Jacen." Turning the controls back to manual, I carefully guided the Trickster to the hangar bay of the New Pilot Academy, where all this began.

There, standing guard in the landing bay was Mara Jade. Once my cockpit was opened, she was in shock at the emergence of my face. "Anakin? Is that you?" In a very un-Mara Jade gesture, she gave me a fierce embrace; I could feel her sobbing against the cold of my armour.

"Mara, it's me. I'm home." Looking around, no one else was here. "Where's Luke? Where's Han and Leia? Where is everyone?"

"Anakin, everyone's home. Only Jacen's missing. He went on some kamikaze mission off to Tatooine. He said he was going to make things right. There has not been word of him for over a month now."

"No, Mara. Jacen's with me."

"What?" Without further explaining it, Jadis awkwardly climbed out of the ship, trying to hold on to Jacen. I rushed over to Jadis to support her while she stood.

"Oh my stars!" Mara ran up to my wife, helping Jacen to stand up. The blood from the sigils had bled through the bandages and his tunic. "Oh, Jacen. What did you do now?"

"He tried to throw a thermal detonator in front of Zorba the Hutt. I… disabled it," I told her the short version, showing her my wrapped up hand.

"Where are my senses?" Mara shook her head. "Come inside, before you get cold." Mara helped me support Jacen as he hobbled inside. Jadis walked at my side; she had covered herself in a white sleeveless top and sarong, to cover her rather scanty dancer regalia.

"Han! Jaina! Jacen's back!" Everyone came running at the sound of Mara's shout. Tears came to my eyes when I recognized everyone: Luke, Leia, Jaina and Ben. Han walked, for once, with restrained dignity; he broke down into a run when he saw Jacen, the blood seeping through his shirt.

"Anakin!" Jaina and Leia rammed into me, almost choking me with a strong embrace. Ben was not that far behind them, grabbing at my waist.

"Jacen, what happened?" Han and Luke took the burden off Mara and I. "Anakin, who's this?" Han nodded at Jadis, tiredly standing by the wall.

"Han, this is Jadis, my wife. Listen, I know I was wrong in boltin' off like that. Can you forgive me?" Without another word, Han and I embraced; for the first time in over ten years, I cried, letting out all the agony that dwelled my mind.

"Now, I would love an explanation more than the next person about what's going on." Han looked at Leia as she rebuked me silently for leaving her so long ago.

"And I would love to give you one, but it will be best to give them tomorrow when the four of us are rested."

"The four of us?" Leia looked at Jadis, or more specifically, at Jadis' swelling belly. "I see. Well, get off to bed. Nothing changed since the time you left, Anakin." With one last kiss, Leia let us go.

I took Jacen up to his room, laying him down on the bed for him to sleep. He looked like a fallen angel, his dark hair swept over his eyes as he slumbered off. Once he was settled, Jadis and I left for some time alone in my old quarters.

Like Leia had said, nothing had changed from when I had left. In the morning, I laid on my back as I gazed at the ceiling above me. Gently climbing out of bed so to not disturb Jadis' peaceful sleep, I rifled through my belongings for my weapons kits. Just like my mother had written in her memoirs, underneath the velvet padding was a false bottom. Flipping it up, I gazed for the first time at my father.

Anakin Skywalker, father of Luke and Leia Skywalker. My adoptive mother was my half-sister; fate had a twisted sense of humour. Besides the pictures, there were holograms of him; Mom must have taken pictures of him without his knowing. Staring at the pictures, my mother was right to give me his namesake; I looked just like him. I could almost feel confidence in his casual stance as he leaned against a wall in a different sketch.

I also found the hologram of a little girl that could only be A'Marie Skywalker, my half-sister. She had some of Anakin's looks: the sandy brown hair, the inquisitive blue stare, but she was untainted by the Force's dark side. If she was twelve when my mother rescued her twenty-four years ago, then she must be thirty-five years old by now. I wonder what she would be like.

Looking further into the hidden compartment, I found a single hologram of who could only be Starkiller, my father's one-time apprentice. He was trained to be ruthless, unmerciful, to be Sith. And yet, he was the founder of the Rebel Alliance. Maybe I could follow down his path as well, finding redemption in what I had done under Zorba.

Shaking away my errant thoughts, I walked down the hall, dressed in my familiar black tunic and pants, to the eating area. There, Han, Leia, Luke, and Mara Jade waited for me. Without a word, Leia pushed a mug of sour tea in front of me. In their eyes, they all wanted an explanation of what I had done for the last five years.

Without even a hello, I began. I told them everything since I arrived at Zorba's palace. Han cringed when he heard that name; Jacen's words about Han's carbonite prison came back to me. Leia made me peel off my tunic to show her the burns that the gauntlet-master had inflicted on me as part of my test; she started to rub in more ointment to them, soothing the everlasting itch they had created. I made my voice hollow when I described what I had done to Jacen, and what had occurred after my plea for freedom.

Leia wept silently into Han's shoulder as she heard what I had done to her son. Han had aged since last I saw him; the grey in his temple was now snow-white. He glared at me; the knuckles in his fist, the one that was placed just so on the table, were white.

"So what now, Anakin?" Luke stared straight at me, his anger apparent in his eyes and in the clenched fist on the table. "What are your plans? Who do you think will hire you, a bounty hunter who tortured his own foster brother for the sake of an oath?" His voice was barely staying even, the fury lapping at its edges.

"Get out." Han was quiet, for a moment. "Get out of my sight! I never wanna see your face around here again!" He jumped up from the table, his spittle raining down on me. His face was red with the utmost rage. How could I blame him? I did torture his blood-son for the sake of an oath. "Family always came above the job, Anakin! That was the rule! Why did you break it?!" He grabbed my tunic, tossing it into the corner. "Did I not teach you good enough to know that?"

Sighing, I pushed myself away from the table and away from Leia's worrying hands. I picked the tunic up from the corner and walked to the door. Just before I left, I paused. "What would you have done, Han?"

"What in the stars are you talking about?" Han lowered his fists ever so slightly.

Now it was my turn to be angry. "What would you have done, Han?" I spat out that word with all the venom that it deserved. "If you had to choose between torturing your foster brother in order to live, or dying the most horrible death imaginable in front of the creature who had given you everything; what would you have done?!" Turning around, my anger finally burst from the dam of my self-reserve. My power flew out from my body, empowering all of the inanimate objects around me.

"Anakin, what do you mean?" Leia stood next to her husband, the tears falling from her eyes at my disownment.

"I was his slave! I had no choice!" Honestly, were they that dense? I pointed to the scar on the back of my neck where Jadis had removed my microchip. "Every one in Zorba's court has a chip in their neck. If they did something to displease them, that chip would activate and destroy your spinal cord millimetre by millimetre. You would paralyze and suffocate slowly before the entirety of the court. He loved it when I had to execute people that way; it gave him pleasure!"

I finally lost it. "My real father was even worse then me, Han! You must have known him: Anakin Skywalker ringing any bells? Or do you know him by Darth Vader, instead?" The look of utter horror on their faces gave me little pleasure. They finally knew: their once-adoptive son was in fact their half-brother by blood and by marriage.

"My father was Anakin Skywalker. My mother loved him and had me. I'm your half-brother, Leia, not your son! That man that I tortured was my nephew! Don't you dare think that I'm not tormented by that choice!"

My powers had come out of my control. Cutlery was banging against the table. The walls threatened to come undone from their bolts and fly out at my once-family. I lifted Luke up into the air and began to choke him, his fingers scrabbling at his slowly closing throat; it would have been so easy to stop his miserable life, one of the many banes of my childhood. "I even inherited my father's power, brother! Since mine is untrained, it is more dangerous than yours ever will be!" I spat my answer at Luke's shocked face.

By now, the burst of power had ceased and the kitchen was back in order. Luke fell to the floor, crawling away from me with horror in his eyes. I was panting now, but their faces reflected the atrocity of my tale. "So you tell me, Han. Do you choose to save your own life, or someone else's?" I was disgusted at their inaction; I turned through that door. That part of my life was over; I never should have come back.

"Anakin!" Jadis was clutching the door frame of my room. Blood splattered on her gown and on the floor. Screaming, she collapsed in the pool of her own blood.

"Help! Someone, help!" Now it was my turn to be terrified as I carried my wife into our room. I was afraid to help her in case my powers grew out of control again. Leia came rushing to my aid, taking over the whole operation. Within minutes, I was a father. Jadis was carrying twins, a healthy boy and girl.

Han stood in the doorframe. His anger began to dissipate but his eyes still shone hatred for me. He watched as his wife helped my own to recover from her ordeal. "This came for you. Apparently, the Hutt thought he owed you something after all." With that, he kicked a trunk towards me and left out of my life.

Curious, I opened the chest. There before my eyes was a fortune of gold coins and jewels. On top of it all was a note. Ironically, it was written in the same Huttese dialect that my gauntlet question was done in. The message was simple. "For everything. Expect more." Staring up at Jadis holding our two children, we made a decision together.

A week after my two children were born, Jadis and I moved our new family away from Coruscant and to the outskirts of the capital city of Naboo. This new planet was a paradise when compared to the desolate planet of Tatooine or the bustling noises and traffic of Coruscant. Naboo was so green, so vibrant, so full of life. I had never seen anything like this before; it was paradise. We decided to live in a townhouse in the Lake Country, a small isolated part of the outskirts bordering on crystal clear lakes and river systems.

Zorba's message held true. Every year, a chest filled with about two million worth of treasure arrived to our doorstep. Perhaps my five years of service meant something to Zorba after all. The annual treasure meant that Jadis and I did not have to work. To me, this meant only one thing: I could spend all the time that I wanted with my children and wife.

Sihad had inherited his father's blue eyes, but his mother's brown hair and complexion. My son always cropped his hair short, instead of tying it back off his face like me. He always wanted to hear stories of adventures and wars from across the galaxy. Sihad had become gifted with his hands, making little trinkets and wooden statues to decorate our house with.

He took the education that I supplied him with extremely seriously, absorbing everything that I taught him. Most of the time, he was an exuberant boy, wanting to fight or wrestle with the neighbourhood's children. However, when he was left alone long enough, he became silent and brooding, almost like me back during my times as Zorba's bounty hunter. During spring and summer, I often took Sihad out to train him to hunt. He became most accomplished, his aim coming close to mine in precision.

Andrea, however, was like her mother in all ways but her eyes. Mom lives on in the eyes of my daughter. Andrea has the same natural gracefulness that attracted me to Jadis. Everyway she walked, the neighbouring boys would be left with their jaws dropped and heart pounding in their chest. Even still, she never cared for them. In her own way, my daughter was more mature then the majority of her age-mates.

In her spare time, she would lock her door and dance in her room, flinging her knee-long braid of thick black hair in the rhythm with the steps that Jadis taught her everyday. It is my joy to buy my daughter little gifts, like a jewelled bracelet, or a small bouquet of flowers, or scented oils to rub in her skin, when it will make her look all the more beautiful when she danced.

Everyday, I woke up late in the day, to find that Jadis was sitting at her desk, either applying makeup to her face, or showing small tips to Andrea on how to make herself look more sensuous for her audiences. Sihad would come bounding into my room and onto my bed, bringing his latest carvings for my inspection. We ate casual meals out of the balcony; nothing was formal between any of us. We played endless amounts of games with each other. Jadis and I taught Sihad and Andrea all that we knew, so that one day they could pass it on to their children.

All of us swam at least ten hours every week. We would swim out to the island, and let ourselves dry on the sand. The old glazier hermit who lived on the island would come by, and we would buy a small something, like a coloured vase, or a clear animal figurine, to remind us of the fun time that we had had that day.

When afternoon would come around, I would sometimes carve wood with my knives with Sihad; afterwards, I would clean them the same way that my mother taught me how. Sometimes, I would take out Mom's old lightsaber and perform a small sword dance for my children, or perform some of the hand-to-hand combat moves that Mom had taught me, watching them gaze in awe at the prowess that I commanded over everything that I did.

Soon, other children within our neighbourhood wanted to learn how to fight like I did. Soon, a small school had started up. After school three times a week, I would teach the children basic self-defense moves for the rare times of danger. I enjoyed working with the children, because this was the next generation; they only wanted to learn because they were bored, not because we were in the middle of the war.

Finally, I decided to pass on the legend on my mom's life and my own to my children. I brought out my mom's memoirs, now tattered and stained from my constant reading in Zorba's palace. My children and even my wife were astounded at what my mom had gone through in her long life. They already knew a small portion of my story, but they were amazed that they had such an amazing heritage.

I did not tell my children who my father was. Instead, I kept the pictures that my mother had drawn so long ago in the table by my bed with my lightsaber. It served as a constant reminder of the past, and the effect it has on the future. The man my father, Anakin Skywalker, was, I strove to become in my daily living.

Five years after I moved to Naboo, I made a pilgrimage to an isolated villa further into the Lake Country. I told Jadis that I just needed some time to gather new skills, having been so out of touch with my weapons since coming to Naboo. I found the place that I thought, and knocked on the door.

A woman opened the door; with wide eyes, she ran into the house and looked up the stairs as if she was yelling something. I almost heard a cry of Father through the Force. My mind jolted: this must have been A'Marie, my half-sister in the flesh.

Someone walking down the stairs jolted my attention. I knew that it was my father before he saw me for the first time. He had not aged in the slightest in the thirty years since the fall of the Empire. When he did see me, he smiled. "I knew that you would find me one day, Anakin." A'Marie looked from him to me, her eyes growing wide with delight.

"Father." That single word caught in my throat as we embraced. Tears came down my eyes as I wept into the shoulder of my father, the man so long absent from my life. The two months that I spent with him and A'Marie honing my skills and learning how to use my mother's lightsaber were the best times of my life, beside my family, and I would share them with nobody else.

There are some times, when I think of what my mother would think of some of the choices I have made in my life. I started out as the surrogate son of a smuggler, to becoming a bounty hunter and protector of a ruthless crime lord, to settling down into the role of devoted father and husband. I do not think that she would be proud of some of my choices, but it is my life to live, and if I have messed up, I will somehow make it right in the end.

Anakin Skywalker Organa
Son of Suri Organa and Anakin Skywalker
Husband of Jadis Gelana
Father of Sihad and Andrea Organa
Former Protector and Bounty Hunter of Zorba the Hutt