Chapter 28 – If I Could Trade Mistakes...

We spent the rest of the day, well, the ninety minutes before Obi-Wan announced he was going to take a shower then straight to his bunk, simply hanging around the ship.

After we had decided to continue our research for Jax, even if Master Jinn didn't agree, he excused himself and literally disappeared. He had exploited his energy and needed some time to rest before he could come back and interact with us. Master Yoda, after Master Jinn went away, politely asked us to leave. And I didn't mind at all. Even sitting down, it didn't feel good at all staying in that cramped space. It was incredibly uncomfortable for me, in my conditions.

Anyway, the three of us, four if you include Artoo, remained on the ship. We weren't in the mood for too much talking, and we remained in a comfortable silence for most of the time. I had to convince Padmè to eat something though, and that took quite a lot of talking. She wasn't in the mood, but with a bit of prodding and pushing I managed to convince her. When she finally agree, she just smiled and turned away, getting something done.

She even managed to get me to eat something, even if I wasn't hungry at all. But I couldn't resist her. She asked, I obeyed. Not much, but at least she was happy with that.

Once Obi-Wan went in the restroom to take his shower, she picked up the first aid kit and made me sit in my bunk. She dragged a chair in front of me and started taking the bandages off my face. "I have to check on that wound before I let you go to sleep."

"There's no need. It doesn't hurt much." I told her. I just wanted to get in the restroom after Obi-Wan, get ready for bed, and sleep until later the next morning. Yoda had told us he wanted to talk to us again, the next day, but I wasn't sure I could face him. At least not again in so little time.

"Just let me check, I'll sleep better if I know how are your wounds."

"I would sleep better if I knew if you're really pregnant or not."

She sighed and shook her head. "First things first. My condition isn't life-threatening, at the moment. In this place, if your wounds don't heal properly, you could catch a nasty virus or worse, infection, and that could get dangerous."

"It's not that I'll go diving in the swamp while these cuts are still open!"

"I know." she folded the long band and placed it in a plastic bag. "I wouldn't let you. Still, I almost lost you once, I won't let it happen a second time."

She gently pulled the bacta-soaked gauze from the cut on my eyebrow. "Oh that's good."she said, smiling. "The cut looks good. It's closed and clean. No signs of infections, and the swelling subsided."

"This must be my lucky day." I groaned.

"You almost look like a human being. Bruised, but human." she made me turn my head towards her. Her slightly cool fingers traced the lines of the bruises that covered the right side of my face. When she pressed a little on my cheekbone to see if it was broken or not, it felt like being hit again.

"Damn..." I moaned, and snatched away from her touch.

"Hurts?"

I nodded. "Yeah, and a lot. Do you think it is broken?"

She pressed a bit more, this time a little bit lighter. "No. maybe the tissue is a bit inflamed from the beating, but the bone is intact. You're lucky, you know?"

"Guess seven years of this made me tougher than before."

She stilled, for a long moment, and locked her gaze on my eyes. I could read the pain and anguish in her eyes, just like every time I brought up the matter. She tried to hide it, but I caught her staring at my scars, when she thought I wasn't looking. And she had the same expression stamped on her face.

I knew she wanted to say something, but she refrained and just kept that inside. Months before I had told her that if she had questions, I was ready to answer them, but she never asked. I knew she wanted to know more than what I had already told her about what happened when I was in jail, yet, she never said a word about it.

I took her hand in mine and rubbed it, trying to warm it a little. "Padmè, I know that look. I get it quite often lately, and I know what it means. What do you want to know?"

She shook her head and brushed a strand of rebel hair out of her face. "Nothing Anakin. I'm just worried about you. You've been beaten, badly, and I had to listen to it through the ComLink. It wasn't nice."

"Knowing you were listening made it even worse. Just don't want you to feel bad for me. I'll be perfectly fine. As soon as this story will be over, we'll go back to Varykino and take a long vacation, a real one this time, without dreams and visions to interrupt us. Alright? And we'll talk. For real."

"What do you mean?"

"It means that you're going to ask questions and I'm going to answer. You need to know more than what I already told you, and I know you want to. No secrets, between us, not about this. Alright?"

She leaned towards me and kissed me. "Alright. Just let me finish this, OK?"

I nodded and let her complete her job. She applied several small band aids on the cut on my eyebrow, to keep it closed, then another one on the cut on the bridge of my nose. After that, a tube of bacta gel appeared from the first aid kit beside her.

I leaned back as soon as I saw it. "Do I really need it?" it smelled like hell and was colder than Hoth. I used to take a bath in that thing after I finished sparring with the others, back when we were teenagers, and even after that, when I returned to the base after a battle. Bumps and bruises were occupational hazards and that was a quick way to get rid of them. But it wasn't the nicest one.

"If you want to get better faster, yes." she said, opening the tube and squeezing a good amount of it on her hand. As lightly as she could, she applied the cold gel on my bruised skin, rubbing until it was absorbed almost completely. "There you go. Done." she said, wiping her fingers on a clean cloth.

"Thank you. Done for good?"

She nodded and leaned on the back of the chair. "Yes, you don't need bandages or dressings anymore. Sleep and the anti-inflammatory I gave you yesterday worked wonders. And the ice too. You're doing way better. How's your head?"

"Except for the extreme confusion inside, pretty good. I'm just waiting for Obi-Wan to get out so I can get ready for bed. I'm quite tired. You should sleep too. You didn't sleep much last night. Nor did Obi-Wan."

"We didn't sleep at all. We didn't want to disturb you and sincerely I wasn't really in the mood for sleeping, not after what happened. And, actually, we've been up and running only for eighteen hours. Obi-Wan and I didn't have any reason to sleep."

"Really?" I had lost my watch so I had lost the track of time. And the jet lag didn't help. I was still as tired as if I hadn't slept for three days straight.

"Really. But this day counted at least as four. And we're all tired. We'll see what morning will bring, alright?"

I don't know what she was talking about, but I know how I spent that night.

Awake!

Soon after Obi-Wan jumped in his bunk and drifted off to sleep, Padmè got ready for bed and left me all the time I needed in the restroom. When I got out, she was already fast asleep. At least she would get some serious sleep.

Unlike me.

I was dead tired. I was ready for a full night of sleep, but while my body demanded the long hours of total blackout to fasten the healing process, my mind was still running and spinning around the same matters over and over again.

I would have loved to toss and turn in my bunk like I was used to do when I was younger, but with that shoulder, I couldn't. That was one of the many problems.

How could I sleep with everything that had happened in the last eighteen hours, actually? At least, not without the help of any medication? Impossible. After two hours of just laying there doing absolutely nothing except for let my mind wonder to places I didn't even want to know they existed, I decided I could at least get out of my bunk, put some clothes on and do the same thing while sitting in the cockpit with Artoo, maybe with something strong to drink.

Too bad we didn't have anything like that in the small fridge, so I fell back to a cup of coffee. While the multi-function machine brewed it, I slowly managed to get a sweatshirt and my boots on. When it was ready, I grabbed a disposable cup out of the closet and dragged my exhausted but sleep self in the cockpit. Once the door was closed, I turned on the lights and sank in the pilot seat.

Artoo was sitting in his small place, turned off and recharging, so I was pretty much alone.

Looking out of the windshield I saw the swamp and nothing more. Everything was quiet and silent. The constant hum of the engines wasn't there to keep me company. I certainly wasn't up to ask for Master Yoda's company. His fucked up grammar tended to unnerve me to say the least. Well, I'm not proud of it, but I had never really managed to get along with him. Never. I rarely sought his advice, I preferred to go for Master Windu, or Master Koon, back in the days of the Jedi Order. And of course Obi-Wan.

But I was alone in that moment. Obi-Wan was too tired and I really didn't want to wake him for something that trivial like my doubts. Or maybe he was the only one that could solve them, I didn't know.

I just sat there, a cup of cooling coffee in one hand and the other bandaged and blocked against my chest. And a myriad of thoughts running all around my head, but I already said that and since I don't want to bore you to death I'll stop repeating it all over again.

I just wanted it to be finished.

Most of all for Padmè. The same moment she mentioned the fact that she could be pregnant, well, everything had changed. The whole perspective had changed. My perspective had changed! My problems suddenly had become so tiny and insignificant that all I wanted at that point was getting Jax out of the hell he had fell into, drag his lazy, paranoid ass to Dantooine and get hell over it. I wanted to go home, I wanted Padmè to get a fucking blood work done to have the certainty of the foundation of her doubts or a denial. And my kids.

I wanted my kids back with me. I wanted to listen to Luke's whining about too much homework and Leia's about not having enough of it. I wanted my family, as a whole, with everything it meant. Even having to deal with that douchebag of Antilles. I could even accept that.

I just wanted normality, even if our situation could be described as anything but normal. But we had our balance, we worked altogether to make it work. And it worked just fine. Taking small steps, we had reached our equilibrium. I was stable, the kids were growing up just fine, they were healthy and so was Padmè. We were happy.

And now?

If I could...

"Fuck those damn dreams..."

"Watch your language Padawan!"

His voice made my jump on my seat. I was lucky enough to not let my coffee spill. "I... I thought were sleeping."

"I was." he closed the door behind him and slipped on the co-pilot seat, beside me. He was still wearing is Pjs and he was barefoot. I had seen him like this just a couple of times. Usually he was the first one to wake up and the last one to go to bed. I had seen him in such a private attire only in a couple of occasions that I couldn't really remember. "I needed to pay a visit to the toilet and I saw the light under the door. That's all. What are you doing awake?"

"Couldn't sleep. I thought I would do something more useful by getting up, put some clothes on and get up here. I can't toss and turn like I would like to with this shoulder, so well, I got out of the bunk, prepared something to drink, and camped in here. I didn't want to wake anyone."

"You didn't, don't worry. And by the way, how's your shoulder?"

I took another sip from my cup. "Not too bad. It doesn't hurt anymore. At least not as much as yesterday."

He nodded. "Good. Your head?"

"A bit fucked up right now, but doesn't hurt either."

"Then why aren't you fast asleep in your bunk, waking me up every hour with your snoring?"

Oh well, straight to the point.

"Don't know. I'm tired, exhausted actually, but my brain won't shut down, just that. Not that I didn't try every technique I know to calm down and get some rest but... here I am."

He remained silent for a moment, just staring at me.

"There's something worrying you. And it's not what Dalan or Master Jinn said. I can feel it." he stated. "It's something... different. And it doesn't look like it is about you."

I turned towards the windshield and sighed. He could always read me as an open book, lately more than ever. And it was better this way. It saved me the effort to explain things to him. The eight years he had spent with Padmè, away from his Jedi routines and most of all away from the Order, its codes, its ways of dealing with people and events had slightly opened his mind to other views and other ways.

He finally could understand my pain. Even if only from an external point of view.

"It's... It's Padmè."

He nodded. "She's been sick for a while now. How long?"

"Seven days, maybe eight. It's hard to tell, she always tries to hide it and look fine."

"Right. Have you understood what's the matter?"

I nodded. "She did. She said she's felt this way already once, some years ago."

"Well, that's good news. It means she knows what to do about that!"

I hid a chuckle behind the cup of coffee. It was disgustingly cold now, but at least it was something to hold on to. "Yeah, definitely. It should be over in some months, if she's right about her sickness."

"What do you mean if she's right? And why should it take months for her to heal? It doesn't look bad."

I sighed. "She might be pregnant."

A long, meaningful pause fell in the cabin. I finished my coffee and threw the disposable cup in the recycle bin and leaned back on the chair, waiting for the bashing to begin. Or at least a lecture. I didn't really know what I was expecting from him. Definitely I didn't expect what he did in reailyt!

"Well, my young Padawan, congratulations!" he said, a broad smile lighting his face, as he gave me a friendly punch on my sane shoulder. "You must be overjoying!"

"Hardly, Master..."

His smile was replaced by a worried frown. "Why? You should be walking on the moon, if only this planed had one!"

"In normal situations, I guess I would walk on the moon, as you said, but now? With all this crap going on? I have very little reasons to do so. First of all, she's not sure and she said she can't be until we go back to Dantooine, which gives me the creeps! And secondly... what the hell I'm supposed to do now? We barely manage to keep going with two growing kids, what are we supposed to do with a newborn? Heck, Antilles will have my head!"

He grunted, quite scornfully, leaning back and hoisting his feet on the command console of the ship. "You're crazy Anakin. First of all, Antilles won't say a word. And if he does, he's going to have a very, very close encounter with a bunch of angry Jedi and their lightsabers. He's acted like a total idiot about you for months, the whole thing about the married couples is total shit, one day he'll realize that. And he'll stop being a jerk, one day or another. He's old enough to behave like a man and not like a whiny teenager, like he's been doing lately. And secondly, why does that give you the creeps?"

"Because not knowing kills me. About everything. It's just me... it's my temper. Not knowing has always set me on edge. And not knowing if my wife is pregnant or not, most of all on such a dangerous situation like this one, well, it's killing me."

He sighed. "How could she be sure about it? I don't really know much about it, but aren't there supposed to be some kind of test or..."

I nodded. "Yes, there are some kind of domestic pregnancy tests, but she doesn't have one at hand."

"Oh... well, I guess I understand. And I guess that she'd prefer taking a blood work done on Dantooine. Sounds smart."

"Yeah, smart. She's not too worried about it. I don't know why. She was terrified the first time... why not this time?"

"Oh Anakin, you're so dense sometimes!" he smiled. "Last time she was scared because your marriage was still secret, there was the war, the birth of the Empire... what the hell, she had all the reasons to be scared! But now? Damnit Anakin, you've changed so much during these years she has no, and I'd like to put a lot of stress on that no, reasons to be scared about having another kid! And you'll manage just fine, don't worry. You're a natural born dad, you'll do astonishingly good. Think about it as a second chance. You'll be around for real this time!"

I shook my head. "I don't deserve that."

"What? Excuse me, but I think that concussion fucked your head up far more than what we thought. What is exactly that you don't deserve?"

"This! All of this! After everything I did when I was younger... I don't deserve this. I don't deserve to be happy! Really, if I could trade mistakes for credits I'd be the richest man in the Galaxy."

He groaned and stood up. "Anakin, stand up please."

"Why?" I asked, a bit confused.

"Oh come on, just do as I say for once in your life!"

Oh well, I did as I said. I stood up and faced him. He looked as angry as I had never seen him. And as an angry man he acted. He hit me so hard and I saw stars. Literally. His clenched fist hit me on my jaw, on the non-bruised side, so fast I couldn't see it. I fell back on the pilot chair again, dumbstruck and hurting.

"Hey, what was that for?" I asked rubbing my sore face.

"For being the greatest idiot of all times! But do you listen to what you say?"

"Yeah, and I'm pretty sure I'm right about it!"

He raised his fist again but stopped before he hit me. He let it go and sat back in front of me. "Well shut the hell up for the Force's sake! Talk about yourself like that again and I swear I'll break your jaw in so many pieces you're gonna need a prosthetic one because Janu won't be able to find all the pieces! Understood?"

I was a little scared after that rant. "Understood..." I whined.

"Good. Because I'm good at the paternal kick in the ass thing. But I can do even better at the Jedi Master punch in the face one. Now man up and stop acting like a whiny teenager, you're no better than Antilles sometimes!"

"Oh right now you're exaggerating a bit, don't you think? I'm worried, that's all! This is not going has I planned, that's what makes me worry like this!"

"Anakin, you should know that right from the start you can't predict the end. And neither the course of the journey. That's how life works, I thought you had come to terms with that."

I nodded. "I know. It's just... you know, I kinda hoped this thing would just go smooth."

"Things never go smooth. Most of all if you're a Jedi. It's our lot in life. Anyway, not to twist the knife in the wound but if she's pregnant for real, why don't you marry her?"

"As Atton Rosh? Well, not that I haven't thought about that but... well, at this point that would a shotgun wedding, but she's still in the newly widowed stage, according to the laws of Naboo. She can't get married for at least five months more."

"Well, consider thought that that one marriage was not totally legal... you were still a Jedi, a Padawan actually, you hadn't resigned from the Order. Technically, that marriage is illegal by all the laws of the former Republic. Hence, she's not your widow. You can marry her as Atton Rosh as soon as we can organize it."

"Are you serious?"

He nodded. "Damn serious. I wouldn't fool around matters like that. It's not my style. And, sincerely, I wouldn't give a damn about that shotgun wedding thing. It's just a crappy tag. Doesn't mean anything."

"It means that a man dishonored someone's daughter and has to marry her by the laws of a planet or a religion. You know, some people out there get cranky about sex outside marriage. Not to mention kids born out of wedlock!"

"Believe me, I've seen my fair share of galaxy, I know what you're talking about. And that's why I wouldn't care much about it. It's not like her father hates you or what. They practically adore you! You're safe on that side!" He yawned and rubbed his face. He was getting sleepy again. "Come on, it's time to go back to bed. You too. No excuses!"

"I can't assure I'll sleep though."

"I could always push you against the wall until you lose consciousness, you know."

"No please no, I've had enough of being beaten like that! First Dalan, then you... no way! I'd prefer a massive dose of painkillers at this point. With that, I fall asleep like a rock in ten seconds!"

He chuckled as he stood up. "Yeah, and then you start talking too much! I really hope you stopped with all that..."

I interrupted him. "Of course I did! What the hell, I've got my wife now! It's not just me and my hand anymore!"

"Good for you. Now, slip into that bunk and get some sleep. Or I'm going to stick that syringe in your butt myself, if I find you awake again for tonight!"


Short, apparently meaningless one. But I like it. Some time between the two of them alone, no interruptions and some laughs. Just to light the story up a little. I felt like the story needed a short comic relief, I don't know... to balance things. And believe me, when I came up with the idea of Obi-Wan punching Anakin in his Pjs I almost threw the laptop to the floor because I was literally doubled in two by too much laughing. Well, I was also watching Firefly, and that show always manages to crack me up one way or another, so... well, that helped. Actually, I think Firefly inspired this one a little bit. Don't know why. Anyway... hope you liked it and see ya soon. These three are going to leave the swamp soon!