Hello lovelies,

After the first section of this chapter we will start to pick up the pace and move forward through time a little faster - we have a lot of territory to cover as we follow this family through the years.

The second section of this chapter perhaps requires a content warning for a depiction of mental illness (post-natal depression). There is no violence, self-harm, or suicidal ideation; I'm largely being cautious by placing a warning on this. But you ought to know that it is sad and if you think it will make you too sad it's very much okay to avoid that passage.

The flight to Coruscant would be both too long and too short. Too long to sit with Anakin, his gifted Padawan of little social tact and endless questions, who had done nothing wrong except unwittingly point out Obi Wan's glaring idiocy in having rushed to Mandalore so urgently and bringing the Chosen One with him. And too short to even begin to digest what had happened and what he would do next. It was imperative that Obi Wan re-enter the Jedi Temple with the air of a Jedi Knight, with the calm and confidence of one who could be trusted with the training of the Chosen One.

Admittedly, some subversive part of him entertained the thought of walking in a total mess and having the Council grant him indefinite meditative leave until they decided what to do with him. But that would mean failing Qui Gon and leaving Anakin behind, and Obi Wan was not prepared to do that.

"If you want to meditate, I can fly," Anakin offered from the co-pilot's seat.

Obi Wan awoke from his reverie and cracked a smile.

"Not a good idea if we wish to stay in the Council's good graces. But thank you for the offer."

Anakin folded his arms.

"I don't see why everyone thinks I shouldn't be allowed to fly. I'm the best on Tatooine."

Obi Wan sighed.

"Coruscant, Anakin, is a planet of bureaucracy and legislation. One requires a licence to fly a ship. And for your licence-" he added, before Anakin could make the suggestion, "You'll need to first acquire a citizenship and then grow six years."

Anakin greeted this news with a phenomenal scowl.

"We're not in Coruscant air space yet," he pointed out sulkily, illustrating on the map from his position in the passenger seat.

"I doubt it's legal for a nine-year-old to pilot a ship in Mandalorian space either."

"Get the Duchess Satine to change the rules."

"You overestimate my influence, Anakin."

Anakin pondered this, turning his gaze now to the stars through the viewport.

"You're not going to get married. Because of the Code."

Obi Wan sighed. The trip was too short for this.

"We are not going to get married for a number of reasons. We decided that some time ago."

"Because you're not allowed to still be a Jedi if you-"

"Many reasons, Anakin," Obi Wan interrupted firmly. "It's a very personal decision, you know."

The child missed, or disregarded, the warning.

"But if the Code said that you were allowed-"

"That's enough, Anakin."

A harshness that Obi Wan had tried to protect Anakin from cracked through his words. He watched the flicker of fear in the boy's face.

"I'm sorry, Anakin," he sighed. "There's a lot… a lot that I need to think about. But I understand why this is weighing on your mind."

He placed his hand on the console between them, extended as a peace offering.

"We'll make visits to your mother as well. It won't be often. But when we can."

Anakin's eyes widened.

"Obi Wan, I… Can we really-"

"If we are already hiding my secret son from the Jedi Council," Obi Wan sighed, rubbing at his aching sinuses, "A few trips to Tatooine should not pose too much difficulty."

Satine had heard that having a newborn was isolating; it followed naturally that having a secret infant would be even more so. That Korkie had been born before her pregnancy had declared itself had given her the opportunity to go one step further than denying his paternity and deny her own involvement too. At the time it had seemed a gift – there had been no need to face the press, no need to lie about a rape that so many women had suffered but she had not, no need to block out the jeers of the traditionalists who would still, despite it all, decry her a slut. There had been no need to explain the powers that allowed an infant of such extreme prematurity to survive without sophisticated life-support, no questions about the father. She had spent the days following the abruption resting undisturbed with her infant recovering from an alleged ovarian torsion. But now she wished she had been honest – halfway honest, at the least – from the start.

Now, she arrived at meetings late and left early, her movements at the whim of the bleeping monitor that informed her when Korkie had woken unsettled from his sleep. Sleep for Satine became what water is to a nomad in the desert – constantly on her mind, begged for by her body. She would look into the days ahead as she planned parliamentary sittings and private meetings and interplanetary video calls and she would anticipate just how little sleep she would get, and then she would worry because she knew that this would make her irritable and forgetful and that Almec would ask her questions about her wellbeing again, and none of the other ministers would dare to ask but they would mutter about her behind her back.

Too young, too tender-hearted, she imagined them saying, over and over again in her mind. Too much a woman and not enough a soldier to lead the Mando'ade.

And this fragility was of course inevitable to a degree whether the child was secret or otherwise, but those months of raising him in secrecy were by far the worst. Bo-Katan did not call or visit, leaving Doctor Sewlen Jerac as Satine's only confidant and ally.

This was not to say that Sewlen was not superb. Sewlen slept the first week of Korkie's life on a mattress on the floor of Satine's bedroom, where she could monitor his breathing and his temperature and intervene whenever required. When Satine woke in the night and mobilised free of her drips and catheter for the first time since her surgery, fumbling through the dark towards the bathroom despite the enormous pain in her core, Sewlen rose and took her hand and supported her on that miniscule journey, and congratulated her as she returned her to bed.

"This hardly calls for congratulations, Doctor Jerac."

"It certainly does. After all your body's been through recently I wouldn't have been surprised if you'd been in urinary retention. You're the second most remarkable patient I've ever had, after your son."

No, Sewlen Jerac was superb – the only problem was that one woman, and particularly a woman so busy as Doctor Jerac, who was too principled to devote her medical attention solely to a privileged monarch, was hardly a village. And after that first week it seemed that no one congratulated Satine for anything at all, let alone passing urine. People only ever seemed to ask her for things: for signatures, for meetings, for her attendance at memorial services, for "A decision, please, about restoring Keldabe's train network." Her planet was broken and needed her care and she could not deny to herself that she had borne a baby at the singularly worst time imaginable.

Tiny Korkaran's greatest grace – and Satine felt rotten for thinking it – was that he slept almost fifteen hours of Mandalore's nineteen hour days. His premature eyes were still all but blind and his brain so tiny and undeveloped that Satine wondered sometimes whether he even knew who she was. He slept, he cried, he produced wet and dirty nappies, and he drank his drip-fed milk with poor coordination. His only displays of affection towards her were to nuzzle his face into her chest when she held him, and to grasp her smallest finger when she placed it in his tiny palm. These were primitive reflexes, Sewlen said. Satine supposed he would perform them for anyone who held him. And it was silly, of course it was, but sometimes at night when Korkie cried Satine would cry too as she held him, because she knew that she loved him but she did not know if this strange creature would ever love her.

There was, however, light on the horizon. It had been Sewlen who first proposed the idea during one of her postnatal checks.

"Of the women taking refuge in your palace, my Lady, many of them are pregnant or with babies in their arms," Sewlen had explained whilst examining the forming scar on Satine's abdomen. "And most of them are unmarried, with a great deal of loss and emotional trauma sustained during the war. A difficult position to be in, of course, on a planet as traditional as this."

"Indeed," Satine had sighed.

Sewlen had offered her a quick smile.

"What I mean to say, your Grace, is that I wouldn't be surprised if one day a woman felt so overwhelmed, so alone and unwell and incapable of caring for her infant… And given that we don't keep any records here, in the Palace, of who comes and goes from the shelter… If one day a woman left her infant behind."

Satine had propped herself up on her elbows thoughtfully.

"My great grand-father was an abandoned infant. The foundling of the Mand'alor."

"Exactly."

It would be weeks if not months until Korkie grew strong and old enough to pass for a healthy term infant – the only sort of infant that survived on Mandalore these days – so Korkaran's public debut would have to wait, and the parenting support with it.

But it would be shameful for a daughter of the Clan Kryze to admit to exhaustion. Satine signed the documents and attended the meetings and decided to restore Keldabe's train network as a leading priority ahead of the slower and more expensive road repairs. She forgot people's names and snapped at Almec and cried between public appearances but never during them. Food didn't seem to have any taste to it and she was never hungry. Her life seemed to be some hopeless blur over which she had little agency. Sewlen called it postnatal depression.

Satine quietly accepted the tablets. They helped, a little.

Meetings, a crying infant. Speeches, a crying infant. Crying when her infant was crying. Crying when she should be sleeping. Meetings. She couldn't cry during meetings. Sleeping. Never enough sleep. The cry of an infant waking her from sleep. Meetings.

Satine fumbled onwards.

Anakin woke Obi Wan once a night; he supposed that a newborn would wake more often still. His thoughts flitted inevitably to Satine as he climbed out of bed and came to sit by his Padawan.

"Gentle breaths, Anakin. Everything is alright."

Anakin shook his head furiously as he swiped at his tears.

"Too many… Why do I have to have so many kriffing nightmares?"

Obi Wan gave the boy's shoulder a squeeze and decided against reprimanding him for his language.

"You have so many nightmares because this is a time of great change for you, and because you are strongly connected to the Force," Obi Wan reminded him. "But you know that this is something we can make better with time and practice. Sit up, Padawan, and let us meditate."

Anakin righted himself in bed.

"Can we talk, before we meditate?"

Obi Wan raised a brow at this detour from their late night routine.

"Yes, Anakin?"

The child looked at him with plaintive gaze.

"Did you ever have nightmares?"

And Obi Wan could only give a wry smile.

"Padawan, I was the worst in the entire creche."

Anakin gnawed thoughtfully on his fist.

"And how long did you have to practice with Master Qui Gon before you could make them go away?"

Obi Wan saw the hope in the blue eyes before him and his heart ached. He could not tell Anakin of the nightmares that he still had – the visions of yellow eyes and a black-and-red face, a Sith resurrected by his hatred, appearing on Mandalore to kill his son.

"It is a lifelong journey, Anakin," Obi Wan murmured, taking the boy's hand from his mouth and giving it a gentle squeeze. "A Jedi never stops striving for the Light. But the nights will be easier with time."

Anakin nodded stoically, unable to hide his inevitable disappointment. Obi Wan understood; he had felt it a thousand times before.

Qui Gon Jinn unable to meet a deadline. Qui Gon Jinn weeping for Tahl. Qui Gon Jinn refusing to accept the rules that everybody else seemed to think were perfectly reasonable. Qui Gon Jinn defeated in an argument with the Council, losing his temper and betraying his frustration.

"But Master, mustn't we always-"

"It's a misleading title, Padawan. I am in truth a master of very little. And the same goes for them – not that they'd ever admit it."

Qui Gon Jinn drunk and crying for Xanatos. Qui Gon Jinn passed out on the bathroom floor. Qui Gon Jinn too angry, too lost in the murky Force, to help his Padawan see through the emotions of his bleeding-hearted crusade. Qui Gon Jinn leaving him on Melida-Daan.

"Obi Wan, are you-"

"I'm fine, Padawan. Thank you. I was thinking of Master Jinn."

A Jedi Master ought to be stronger, wiser, and kinder than their Padawan. Obi Wan had a thousand times bemoaned his Master's apparent inability – or refusal – to be that for him. He would give anything to be that for Anakin. It seemed an impossible task but he would surely find a way.

"Let us let go of the nightmare together, Anakin. Close your eyes."

A bleak chapter - I am sorry. But all of these struggles were things that I really wanted to explore. Having a baby is hard, for everyone, and Satine has it all stacked against her. Raising a Padawan is hard, and no one can ever be as perfect as they want to. I hope you don't read this chapter as Qui Gon hating - all I hope to convey is that he was human. All of them are human, and flawed. And I think it's really beautiful that Satine and Obi Wan are both out there just trying to do their best. This story will be a testament to their strength.

Give all the new parents you know out there some love!

Next chapter will be a big one. Obi Wan will make visits to Mandalore. Anakin will settle into life in the Jedi Temple. Beautiful baby Korkie will learn a new trick.

Thanks as always for your lovely reviews.

xx - S.