Thanks so much for the follows and favourites!

In reply to 17 (Guest): I have been squealing with excitement also bringing this to you all (hence why I have a new chapter up earlier than anticipated). In answer to your question we will more more along canon lines (-ish). I don't want to give too much away but I can tell you that there will be sad and happy times, and that we'll span a number of years forward into the Clone Wars.

Did I write this chapter when I was supposed to be studying obstetric emergencies? Perhaps... But of course, medicine is much cooler in the Star Wars galaxy.

Away we go!

"I'm glad you called me," Sewlen murmured, lifting her hand from the pulse at Satine's wrist. "You're not well."

Satine had hoped to hear the opposite. Lying on her enormous wooden desk, she fought back childish tears. A Mandalorian did not cry from pain. Satine couldn't explain what she was feeling.

"No more parliament this afternoon?" she asked, with failing bravado.

"You'd best hand over to Almec for the rest of the session," Sewlen agreed, with a poorly-concealed grimace. "Do you mind if I-"

"Of course."

Satine pulled her heavy skirts up to her chest. There was a book under her head, and another beneath her right hip. Why wasn't there anything soft in this blasted room? The pain was definitely getting worse. Never mind when Sewlen dug her kriffing fingers into it…

"Does that hurt, my Lady?"

Clinical examination was presumably not very easy upon Mando'ade, who were trained all their lives in a stoic grimace.

"A little," Satine conceded.

"I don't like the feeling of your uterus," Sewlen muttered grimly. "I'll check on Baby in a minute, but I want to get you stabilised first."

A jolt of fear in Satine's chest.

"Don't worry about me, I'm fine," she insisted. "What about my-"

"Little sting, my Lady."

Satine clenched her jaw. Sewlen seemed into on getting a needle the size of a small hose into her vein.

"I'm going to do one more of those on the other side. I'm sorry, my Lady."

"I'm not dying, Doctor Jerac," Satine growled. "I'm asking you to check my baby."

Sewlen set her jaw firmly in telling silence. She avoided Satine's furious eye contact as she procured bags of fluid from her assistant droid and attached them to Satine's intravenous lines.

"I think you're bleeding, my Lady," she explained eventually. "I just want to top you up."

"I'm not-"

"Internally, my Lady," Sewlen asserted, as she strapped a hissing mask onto her face. "Now, take some deep breaths from this and I'll check Baby, alright? T9's just getting the scanner ready."

Satine closed her eyes and listened to the hiss of oxygen over her face. She was crying now, blast it. Her belly hurt. Sewlen had pulled the book from beneath her head so that she lay flat but still she felt dizzy. She barely registered the probe on her abdomen, and then, with Sewlen's apology, between her legs. The oxygen was cold on her face. It didn't seem to be making it any easier to breathe.

Sewlen's firm grip upon her shoulders pulled Satine from the haze. Her face loomed into Satine's field of vision.

"Listen carefully, my Lady," the doctor instructed, a tremor of fear undermining her authoritative tone. "I've had a looked with my scanner and this is an emergency. You're bleeding in the womb. I need to do surgery right now."

Sewlen's hands squeezed at Satine's shoulders as she grimaced and willed herself to continue.

"I need to do surgery right now to save your life," she reaffirmed. "The baby is too young to survive. I'm so sorry."

Satine tried to sit up – this was a mistake, surely, some mistake that she could rectify – but Sewlen pressed her down.

"I'll take him out and bring him to your chest, Satine. That's all I can do. If I leave him inside, you both die."

Tearfulness in the young doctor's voice. Calling her by her first name.

"Why-"

"It's not your fault, Satine," Sewlen vowed. "Now, I'm just going to roll you to your side, and give you a needle to make your tummy and legs numb, and we'll…"

Sewlen gave a steadying breath as she donned a fresh pair of gloves.

"We'll get you fixed."

Bo-Katan was eating yet another dinner of Concordia's finest produce – that is to say, the stringy meat of the local vermin – when the comm came through. Seeing the contact code, Bo-Katan clambered to her feet and out of earshot of her company.

"Satine?"

"Bo-Katan."

Her sister's voice was faint and gasping. She wasn't transmitting any visual.

"You need to come to Sundari. Now. To the Palace."

"Do you care to explain yourself, Satine?"

Her voice might have been sceptical but Bo-Katan strode out of the mess hall and towards the hangar before her sister could even reply.

"I can't exactly just waltz into the Royal Palace, you know," Bo-Katan went on, irritated by her sister's silence. "Your adoring supporters will probably-"

"I need you to come to the Palace now."

Was her sister crying? Granted, not something that was exactly rare for sensitive Satine, but to have called her historically unsympathetic sister about it…

"You might be Mand'alor by sundown, Bo, so if you want your blasted handover-"

Bo-Katan broke into a run, the cool evening air rushing about her face.

"I'm coming, alright? Kriffing hell. What's happened, Satine?"

It was a short run to her ship of choice. Nothing compared to her daily training drills. But Bo-Katan felt as though she might vomit. Her hands shook on the controls as she navigated herself out of Concordia's thin atmosphere.

"You still there, Satine?"

"Doctor says-"

She was gasping worse than ever now.

"Shouldn't talk. Got this mask-"

"Then don't talk," Bo-Katan instructed shortly. "I'll be there soon."

"Can you please-"

"Satine," Bo-Katan warned. "Stop talking. Listen to the-"

"-call Obi Wan? I don't have his code."

Bo-Katan forced back the barrage of expletives rushing to her mouth. Now was not the time to bemoan her sister's idiotic infatuation with the Jetii.

"On it, Satine. You just do what the doctor says. I'll see you soon."

She should have perhaps told her sister that she loved her, before ending the call. She should have said-

Something.

But Bo-Katan had never been eloquent enough, and nothing in her mind made any sense right now. What in the stars had her sister done to get herself half-killed? Bo-Katan's insides felt like they were twisting in on themselves. She opened the comm directory on the ship's display pad and ignored the shaking in her hand. She had a blasted Jetii to call.

Obi Wan knelt down to be level with the boy he had vowed to train. The boy whose Force signature, presently, was alight with a great and powerful, forbidden fear.

Fear was not the Jedi way. Neither was the anguish that gripped Obi Wan by his gut.

How, Master, how could you have possibly thought that I could-

"Something happened," Anakin probed.

Child, I do not have the words for it.

Obi Wan laid a hand on the boy's shoulder.

"Anakin…"

"Where's Master-"

Anakin was cut off by the chirping of Obi Wan's commlink. He silenced it without dropping the child's pleading gaze. His Master had asked that he would train the boy and he would. For Qui Gon he would. He would be patient and he would be strong. He would live in the present moment connected to the enormous, undying energy of the Force.

"Anakin-"

A second bleep of the commlink, swiftly silenced.

"Anakin," he repeated, and swallowed hard. "Master Qui Gon was killed."

Oh boy. It's a bad day in the galaxy.

Satine's bleed in the womb is called a placental abruption, for the curious. Don't get too attached to any facts that you read because I will take some grand creative license with it all next chapter, when Dr Sewlen Jerac and T9 commence surgery.

Please consider sharing your thoughts! I am excited to hear from you.

xx - S.